Gene expression analysis of intestinal stem cells (ISCs) in Irf2 conditional deletion mice.

To analyze global gene-expression changes caused by IRF2 loss in ISCs, ISCs were prepared from Irf2fl/fl: Lgr5-EGFP-Ires-CreERT2(Irf2fl/fl: Lgr5ki) mice or Irf2fl/fl: Ah-Cre: Lgr5-EGFP-Ires-CreERT2 (Irf2AhcKO: Lgr5ki) mice 1 month after 5 consecutive days of βNF treatment. The Gene Ontology (GO) analysis indicated that the GO terms overrepresented among the genes upregulated in ISCs of βNF treated Irf2AhcKO: Lgr5ki mice compared with those of Irf2fl/fl: Lgr5ki mice included “immune system process”, “immune response”, and “cellular response to Interferon-beta”, all from the GOTERM_Biological Processes (BP) category. Because these GO_term inculded many IFN-inducibl genes, IFN signaling augumented in Irf2 deleted ISCs. ISCs were prepared from Irf2fl/fl: Lgr5-EGFP-Ires-CreERT2(Irf2fl/fl: Lgr5ki) mice or Irf2fl/fl: Ah-Cre: Lgr5-EGFP-Ires-CreERT2 (Irf2AhcKO: Lgr5ki) mice 1 month after 5 consecutive days of βNF treatment. Gene-expression profiles were obtained from the ISCs of four independent Irf2fl/fl or Irf2ΔAh-Cre mice in two biological replicates.