Evaluation of the physiological effects of a biotechnologically produced oyster mushroom in the liver of obese Zucker rats by transcriptomics

The hypothesis was tested that biotechnologically produced Pleurotus sajor-caju (PSC) influences metabolic health of obese Zucker rats. To test this, obese Zucker rats were randomly assigned to 2 groups of 12 rats each with similar body weights (BW) and fed diets either without (OC) or with 5 % PSC (OPSC) for 4 weeks and hepatic transcript profiling was performed. Transcriptomics of the liver revealed a total of 580 transcripts differentially expressed between OPSC and OC. For microarray analysis, n = 6 RNA samples each of the group OC and group OPSC were used for hybridization to the Affymetrix Rat Gene 2.0 ST array.