Transcriptome profiling of wildtype, nonoperated mouse hearts compared to wildtype, sham operated hearts

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the activation of the cardiac inflammatory response in the hearts of SHAM (surgical opening of the chest) mice in comparison to CONTROL hearts isolated from naïve (not operated) mice. Male C57BL/6J (10 weeks) were subjected to an open-chest ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) SHAM procedure in order to examine the effects of this surgery alone in producing cardiac inflammation. The procedure consisted of thoracotomy and a suture passed around the left anterior descending artery (LAD). The mouse chest was kept open for approximately 45 min. We chose to study an open-chest I/R SHAM because this is the reference surgery for the most common surgical procedure used to study cardiac inflammation. Mice were sacrificed 5 days after the procedure and the hearts were removed and used in RNAseq experiments. Overall design: mRNA sequencing profiles were generated from 5 each of SHAM (sham-operated) and CONTROL (naïve, no surgery) hearts on an Illumina HiSeq 3000 instrument.