Combined metabolomic and transcriptomic profiling approaches reveal the cardiac response to high-fat diet

Purpose: Observing the response of the heart to dietary interventation at the metabolomic and transcriptomic level may have relevance for cardiovascular diseases Methods: RNA Seq of 12 week old WT male mice on chow or HFD and WT female mice on Chow or HFD; RNA was extracted and reverse-transcribed after polyA selection to complementary DNA for sequencing on an Illumina NovaSeq platform Results: RNAseq from heart tissue revealed significant differences in expression of 292 mRNA, with an FDR <0.05. PCA showed that there were significant sex differences in chow-fed mice. It also separated HFD-fed vs. Chow-fed samples for both male and female mice. Conclusions: This work reveals the response of a vital organ to dietary intervention at both metabolomic and transcriptomic levels, which is a fundamental question in physiology that may have relevance for cardiovascular diseases. This work also reveals significant sex differences in cardiac metabolites and gene expression. Overall design: RNA Seq of 12 week old WT male mice on Chow or HFD and WT female mice on Chow or HFD