Comparing temporal blood transcriptomes of mouse and piglet colitis models to ulcerative colitis patients reveals similarities in activated pathways in spite of large differences in expressed genes [smallRNASeq.mouse]

ABSTRACT: Animal models are essential for understanding human diseases and for assessing treatments. The utility of a disease model depends on the extent to which key genes and pathways involved in the human disease are also affected in the animal. Only a few studies systematically evaluate how well a particular model organism recapitulates a human disease using transcriptomics data. Even fewer transcriptomics studies investigate how different models perform in relation to each other for a specific human disease. In these instances, there are typically different mouse models that are compared, not different species. Therefore, there are no established methods for comparing different animal models, particularly between different species, and the methods and criteria used can greatly affect the analysis results. Here, we profile and compare the temporal blood transcriptome of two animal models of ulcerative colitis (UC) obtained by administration of dextran sodium sulfate (DSS): a widely used mouse model and a less well-characterized pig model. Total and small RNA-Seq on whole blood was performed at multiple time points during the study. We highlight similarities and differences between the two models at the gene and pathway level and use publicly available data to assess how well each model resembles the transcriptome of UC patients. While we do not observe a large overlap of differentially expressed genes between mice, pigs, and humans, we observe the same pathways being regulated. Not unexpectedly, the pig model is most similar to the human disease. This is the first study providing high throughput blood transcriptomic data for the pig DSS model

ORGANISM(S): Mus musculus

PROVIDER: GSE241389 | GEO | 2024/11/01

REPOSITORIES: GEO