Dexamethasone-induced transcriptional patterns across different tissues

Glucocorticoids act in a highly coordinated manner on various tissues, causing discrete patterns of biological effects. In this study, we aimed to inspect this very sophisticated transcriptional machine by comparing gene expression changes in specific tissues after the administration of a prototypical GR (dexamethasone). We reevaluate the tissue-specific acute effects of dexamethasone on gene expression. We provide a resource summarizing the effects on gene expression of dexamethasone in multiple tissues in mice, as a model organism. The microarray experiment was performed in nine tissues (adrenal cortex, perigonadal adipose tissue, hypothalamus, liver, kidney, anterior thigh muscle, pituitary gland, spleen, and lungs) from adult male C57BL/6 mice using whole-genome microarrays. The animals that received DEX 10 mg/kg i.p. four hours before tissue collection. For each tissue, 4-6 samples (each representing RNA pooled from two animals) were hybridized with Illumina MouseWG-6 v2 BeadChip arrays.