Hepatic gene expression in BALB/c mice fed a quercetin diet

We showed that diets containing 0.1% or 0.5% quercetin lowered the STZ-induced increase in blood glucose levels and improved plasma insulin levels. A cluster analysis of the hepatic gene expressions showed that 0.5% quercetin diet suppressed STZ-induced alteration of gene expression. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and quantitative RT-PCR analysis showed that the quercetin diets had their greatest suppressive effect on the STZ-induced elevation of expression of cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor p21(WAF1/Cip1) (Cdkn1a). In this experiment, we determined the effect of quercetin on healthy control BALB/c mice that were fed the AIN93G diet containing 0, 0.1, 0.5 or 1% quercetin for 2 weeks. GSEA and one-way ANOVA did not detect any significant changes in hepatic gene expression in normal mice as a result of a quercetin diet. Using a linear modeling approach and the empirical Bayes statistics, we found that Ubc were significantly reduced by both the 0.5% and 1% quercetin. Six-week-old male mice were divided into 4 groups of 6 mice each, housed in groups of 3 per cage, and fed a standard purified AIN-93G diet containing 0% (Control), 0.1% (0.1), 0.5% (0.5), or 1% quercertin (1.0) for 2 weeks.