Transcript profiling in the liver of piglets fed carnitine

Carnitine is a water soluble quaternary amine which is essential for normal function of all tissues. Besides improving performance characteristics of livestock animals carnitine has attracted scientific interest due to several health-related effects, like protection against neurodegeneration, mitochondrial decay, and oxidative stress, improvement of glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity as well as reduction of hepatic steatosis. To gain insight into mechanisms through which carnitine exerts its beneficial metabolic effects, we fed piglets either a control or a carnitine supplemented diet, and analyzed the transcriptome in the liver, which plays a central role in whole body metabolism. Total RNA was isolated from pig liver samples for hybridization on Affymetrix GeneChip porcine genome arrays. Two RNA pools, each for the control group and the carnitine group, were used. Each RNA pool comprised RNA from 4 pigs.