RNA-Seq Analysis of Wild Type and Elovl2C234W Mouse Retinal Transcriptomes

Purpose: The lipid elongation enzyme ELOVL2 is a molecular regulator of retina aging in both human and mice. The point mutation Elovl2C234W in mice disrupts Elovl2-specific enzymatic activity and results in loss of ELOVL2-specific function. The goal of this study is to detect the roles of gene Elovl2 in transcription regulation in mouse retina by high-throughput transcriptome data analysis in the gene loss-of-function model. Fresh bulk retina tissue of both Wild Type and Elovl2C234W mice in triplicate were homogenized thoroughly in TRIzol Reagent (15596026, Invitrogen) followed by RNA isolation. The poly-adenylated (poly-A) transcripts from the isolated total RNA sample were enriched and performed strand specific mRNA-Seq TruSeq libraries preparation followed by Next Generation Sequencing. mRNA-Seq raw reads data was mapped to mm10 assembly mouse genome by homer (v4.11) aligner tool STAR. The uniquely mapped tags in exons on minus strand (one isoform per locus) were quantified by analyzeRepeats.pl. Raw reads count was normalized to experiment totals and performed differential expression by DESeq v1.24.0 program.