Expression data from postnatal mouse apical and basal organ of Corti from Dicer1 conditional knockout and littermate control cochleae.

Cre recombinase-mediated conditional knockout of floxed Dicer1 alleles causes depletion of small RNAs including microRNAs, which function to repress target mRNA expression by inhibiting translation and/or stimulating mRNA degradation. We used microarrays to examine gene expression in apical versus basal organ of Corti from the cochleae of control and mutant mice in which Dicer1 was deleted and microRNAs were depleted specifically in sensory hair cells by Atoh1 promoter-driven Cre recombinase expression. Each biological replicate represents the combined apical or combined basal segments of organ of Corti from both cochleae of a single mouse. Two biological replicates for apical and basal organ of Corti from Dicer1 conditonal knockout and littermate controls were collected for RNA extraction and microarray analysis.

Cre重组酶（Cre recombinase）介导的floxed Dicer1等位基因（floxed Dicer1 alleles）条件性敲除，会导致包括微小RNA（microRNAs）在内的小RNA耗竭。此类小RNA通过抑制翻译过程或刺激mRNA降解，实现对靶mRNA表达的抑制功能。我们采用微阵列（microarrays）技术，检测对照组与突变小鼠耳蜗的顶端、基底螺旋器（organ of Corti）的基因表达水平；该突变小鼠通过Atoh1启动子（Atoh1 promoter）驱动的Cre重组酶表达，特异性敲除了感觉毛细胞内的Dicer1基因，并耗竭了其内的微小RNA。每个生物学重复（biological replicate）样本取自单只小鼠双侧耳蜗的顶端或基底螺旋器的混合组织段。本研究共收集Dicer1条件性敲除小鼠及其同窝对照小鼠（littermate controls）的顶端、基底螺旋器样本各2个生物学重复，用于RNA提取与微阵列分析。