RNA-Seq analysis of the pancreatic islets of beta cell specific adult Nkx2.2 mutant mice

Aim:Transcriptional analysis of the pancreatic islets of adult Nkx2.2 flox/flox; RipCre mice versus control Methods:Pancreatic islets from 4week old Nkx2.2 mutant mice and controls were isolated and total RNA was extracted.Libraries were prepared from total RNA (RIN>8) with the TruSeq RNA prep kit (Illumina) and sequenced using the HiSeq2000 (Illumina) instrument. More than 20 million reads were mapped to the mouse genome (UCSC/mm9) using Tophat (version 2.0.4) with 4 mismatches and 10 maximum multiple hits. Significantly differentially expressed genes were calculated using DEseq. Results: Among the downregulated genes with a p-value=0.05 are important genes for beta cell function and idenity.Among the upregulated genes with a p-value=0.05 are non beta endocrine hormones. Conclusion: Nkx2.2 activates important beta cell genes and actively represses non beta cell genes mRNA profiles of the pancreatic islets of 4 week old control and Nkx2.2 mutant mice were generated by deep sequencing , in triplicate, using Illumina HiSeq2000.