Rat Life Cycle (RLC) Heart Gene Expression Data

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of mortality, with sex and age being strong risk factors. Mitochondria are vital for normal cardiac function, and regulation of mitochondrial structure and function may impact susceptibility to CVD. We analyzed the basal expression levels of mitochondria-related genes in the hearts of male and female untreated control rats at different ages to identify potential role of mitochondria in differential susceptibility to CVD between the sexes. Hearts from 5 male and 5 female rats at three different ages (young (8-week), adult (21-week), and old (78-week)) were used for investigation of sex-related differences in expression levels of genes. At each age, rats were humanely euthanized by CO2 asphyxiation and whole hearts were removed quickly, flash frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at -80˚C until further investigation. The frozen hearts were individually ground into powder in liquid nitrogen using a mortar and pestle chilled on dry ice. Total RNAs were extracted from heart tissue powder and gene expression was measured using Agilent Rat Whole Genome Microarrays (4 x 44k format; Agilent Technologies, Inc.).