Bone marrow TTP deficeincy significantly increased inflammation while reduced plasma lipid and hepatic steatosis in LDLR knockout mice

In order to examine the effects of bone marrow TTP deficiency on inflammation and lipid metabolism and determine the driving force during atherosclerosis, 8 week-old female LDLR−/− mice on C57BL/6J background were lethally irradiated and reconstituted with a wild type (TTP+/+) or TTP knockout (TTP−/−) bone marrow cells and fed a Western diet for 12 weeks. Then mice were sacrificed and tissues were collected for analysis. Liver tissues were collected and gene expression was analysed using a whole genome microarray. Bone marrow TTP−/− recipients displayed a significantly higher systemic and multi-organ inflammation compared to the BM-TTP+/+ recipients. BM-TTP−/− mice displayed a significant reduction of serum lipid levels, attenuated hepatic steatosis, and decreased lipid excretion than the control mice. microarray data showed that BM-TTP deficiency modulate liver genes involved in lipid metabolism and inflammatory response. RT-qPCR was used to confirm the results in several genes from microarray data. BM-TTP deficiency did not further accelerate atherorogenesis process in LDLR−/− mice after a Western diet feeding. TTP promoted VLDL to drive proinflammatory mechanism into proatherogenic mechanism. Two-condition, one-color experiment. LDLR knockout mice were transplanted with wild type or TTP knockout bone marrow cells and gene expression was performed on RNA isolated from liver. 4 biological replicates per each experimental group.