RNA Sequencing Facilitates Quantitative Analysis of Control and GLUT1-HK2-PFKFB3 Overexpressed Transcriptomics in Mouse Skeletal Muscle

Purpose: RNA-Seq uses next-generation sequencing to analyze expression across the transcriptome, enabling to detect known or novel features and quantify RNA. The goal of this study is to compare transcriptome profiles between control and GLUT1-HK2-PFKFB3 overexpressed mouse skeletal muscle. Methods: Total RNA was isolated from the gastrocnemius muscle of chow diet-fed M;G and control mice at the age of 3-month-old using RNAiso Plus (Takara Bio). Three independent pooled samples per group were analyzed. Sequencing libraries were generated using NEBNext® UltraTM RNA Library Prep Kit for Illumina® (NEB, USA) following manufacturer's recommendations and index codes were added to attribute sequences to each sample. The clustering of the index-coded samples was performed on a cBot Cluster Generation System using TruSeq PE Cluster Kit v3-cBot-HS (Illumia) according to the manufacturer's instructions. After cluster generation, the library preparations were sequenced on an Illumina Hiseq platform and 125 bp/150 bp paired-end reads were generated. Index of the reference genome was built using Hisat2 v2.0.5 and paired-end clean reads were aligned to the reference genome using Hisat2 v2.0.5. Fragments Per Kb of exon per Million mapped reads (FPKM) were calculated using featureCounts v1.5.0-p3. Results: We mapped about 6 million sequence reads per sample to the mouse genome and identified 54533 transcripts in the gastrocnemius muscle of control and GLUT1-HK2-PFKFB3-overexpressed mice. RNA-seq data confirmed stable expression of 10 known housekeeping genes, and 7 of these were validated with qRT–PCR. A total 664 transtripts were differentially expressed in wildtype and GLUT1-HK2-PFKFB3 overexpressed skeletal muscle with a cutoff of 2.0-fold and p < 0.05 from RNA sequencing analysis. Altered expression of 15 genes was confirmed with qRT–PCR, demonstrating the high degree of sensitivity of the RNA-seq method. Overall design: mRNA profiles of control and GLUT1-HK2-PFKFB3 overexpressed mouse gastrocnemius muscle