Next Generation Sequencing analysis of the global expression profiling in bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDMs) from wild-type and RBP4-deficient mice.

To investigate the influence of retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4) deficiency on the expression of genes related to cholesterol metabolism, we examined the expression profiling of global genes in BMDMs from wild-type(WT) and RBP4-deficient mice (RBP4-KO) by RNA-seq. The results revealed that expression of 71 genes were greater than twofold in RBP4-KO BMDMs relative to their expression levels in WT cells.In addition, the expression of 158 genes were lower than in RBP4-KO BMDMs compared to that of WT cells. Clustering analysis suggested that deficiency of RBP4 suppressed the expression of a subset of cholesterol uptake-associated genes without affecting the expression of genes related to cholesterol synthesis or efflux, indicating that RBP4 is likely involved in regulating cholesterol homeostasis. Overall design: mRNA profiles of BMDMs from WT and RBP4-deficient mice.