Project description:Human cardiomyopathies often lead to heart failure, a major cause of morbidity and mortality in industrialized nations. Described here is a phenotypic characterization of cardiac function and genome-wide expression from C3H/HeJ, C57BL/6J, and B6C3F1/J male mice. Histopathologic analysis identified a low-grade background cardiomyopathy (murine progressive cardiomyopathy) in eight of nine male C3H/HeJ mice (age nine to ten weeks), but not in male C57BL/6J and in only of ten male B6C3F1/J mice. The C3H/HeJ mouse had an increased heart rate and a shorter RR interval compared to the B6C3F1/J and C57BL/6J mice. Cardiac genomic studies indicated the B6C3F1/J mice exhibited an intermediate gene expression phenotype relative to the 2 parental strains. Disease-centric enrichment analysis indicated a number of cardiomyopathy-associated genes were induced in B6C3F1/J and C3H/HeJ mice, including Myh7, My14, and Lmna and also indicated differential expression of genes associated with metabolic (e.g., Pdk2) and hypoxic stress (e.g. Hif1a). A novel coexpression and integrated pathway network analysis indicated Prkaa2, Pdk2, Rhoj, and Sgcb are likely to play a central role in the pathophysiology of murine progressive cardiomyopathy in C3H/HeJ mice. Our studies indicate that genetically determined baseline differences in cardiac phenotype have the potential to influence the results of cardiotoxicity studies.
Project description:Furan is a mouse and rat hepatocarcinogen. We sought to determine the dose-dependent changes in gene expression upon exposure of B6C3F1 mice to furan in order to better understand furan’s mode of action. In this study we examined the transcriptional response in liver tissue of female B6C3F1 mice to BrdU treatment (in drinking water for 5 days before sacrifice). This was a toxicogenomic study in which mice were also exposed to 0, 1 or 8 mg/kg bw furan (by oral gavage) for 3 weeks. Mice were sacrificed four hours after the final furan exposure. Each dose group had 4-5 biological replicates. We used a two-colour reference design and SurePrint G3 Mouse GE 8x60K microarrays (Agilent). Please note that data for all non-BrdU treated animals was previously reported in GEO [GSE48644]. All samples (with or without BrdU) were part of the same randomized block design for the microarrays.
Project description:Furan is a mouse and rat hepatocarcinogen. We sought to determine the dose-dependent changes in gene expression upon exposure of B6C3F1 mice to furan in order to better understand furan’s mode of action. Adult female B6C3F1 mice were exposed to 1, 2, 4 or 8 mg/kg bw furan or vehicle control (corn oil) for three weeks and sacrificed four hours after the final exposure.
Project description:Susceptibility to the hepatocarcinogen Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) varies among species and with age. Mice are refractory to carcinogenic and toxic effects of AFB1; however, B6C3F1 mice show transient sensitivity if dosed shortly after birth. We compared age-related differences in gene expression and transcriptional responses to AFB1 in livers of newborn (4-day-old) and adult mice. Experiment Overall Design: Experiments were carried out under the protocol approved by MIT Animal Care Committee. Pregnant C57BL/6J female mice, mated to C3H/HeJ males, and adult (at least 60 day-old) B6C3F1/J hybrid F1 male mice (C57BL/6J female x C3H/HeJ male) were obtained from Jackson Labs. They were housed in plastic cages (one per cage) under controlled environmental conditions and 12 h light/dark cycle. Food and water were supplied ad libitum. After female mice gave birth, the male B6C3F1 pups were dosed at 4 days by a single i.p. injection of AFB1 (6 mg/kg body weight) in DMSO (10 ml/kg body weight) or the same volume of just DMSO. The treatments were always performed at the same time of the day and the pups were returned to their mothers until they were sacrificed 4 or 24 h after treatment. Adult B6C3F1 males were treated with the same doses and volumes of AFB1 or DMSO after an acclimation period of at least two weeks and sacrificed 4 or 24 hours after treatment. We noticed that injection of a volume of 10 ml/kg (whether AFB1 or vehicle alone) is tolerated poorly by adult animals and thus another group of adult animals was added which was treated with the same (6 mg/kg) dose of AFB in lower (5 ml/kg) volume. Corresponding vehicle control animals (5ml/kg DMSO) were also used. In addition, untreated controls were used and sacrificed together with the treated animals. Three independant bilogical replicates were used for each experimental point. Total RNA was isolated from livers and processed according to standard Affymetrix protocol.