DNA methylation profiles of KK.Cg-Ay/J (KKAy) mice and KK-a/a (KKa) mice. DNA methylation profiles of KK.Cg-Ay/J (KKAy) mice and KK-a/a (KKa) mice

The differential DNA methylation in hepatocytes was compared between the KK.Cg-Ay/J mice and the KK-a/a mice, corresponding to the Diabetic strain and the wild-type known as control. The methylation microarrays were used to support gene expression for screening the candidates susceptibility to the pathogenesis of Type-2 Diabetes in the pre-development, early and development stages, corresponding to the 6, 16 and 42 weeks old. To determine the methylation-dependent biological processes and pathways contributing to development of Diabetic phenotypes in the KKAy mouse, we identified the candidates with the differential DNA methylation levels between the KKAy and KKa mice. The expression of methylation-dependent genes have relationship linkage to construct the networks for mechanistic explanation of the disease. Overall design: The comparison of DNA methylation profiles between the KKa mice and the KKAy mice, which are described as the Diabetic model with obesity. There were four KKAy mice and four KKa mice in each investigating stage and we totally had three stages for 6, 16 and 42 weeks old for the experiment. Samples from the liver tissues of the four grouped mice were mixed together with equal weight, with two replicates for microarray analysis.