In vivo endothelial gene regulation in diabetes

J Gregory Maresh and Ralph V Shohet

Department of Medicine, University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine, Honolulu, USA

author email corresponding author email

Cardiovascular Diabetology 2008, 7:8doi:10.1186/1475-2840-7-8


Published:	19 April 2008

Abstract

Background

An authentic survey of the transcript-level response of the diabetic endothelium in vivo is key to understanding diabetic cardiovascular complications such as accelerated atherosclerosis and endothelial dysfunction.

Methods

We used streptozotocin to induce a model of type I diabetes in transgenic mice that express green fluorescent protein under the control of an endothelial-specific promoter (Tie2-GFP) allowing rapid isolation of aortic endothelium. Three weeks after treatment, endothelial cells were isolated from animals with blood glucose > 350 mg/dl. Aortae from the root to the renal bifurcation were rapidly processed by mincing and proteolytic digestion followed by fluorescent activated cell sorting to yield endothelial cell populations of >95% purity. RNA was isolated from >50,000 endothelial cells and subjected to oligo dT amplification prior to transcriptional analysis on microarrays displaying long oligonucleotides representing 32,000 murine transcripts. Five regulated transcripts were selected for analysis by real-time PCR.

Results

Within replicate microarray experiments, 19 transcripts were apparently dysregulated by at least 70% within diabetic mice. Up-regulation of glycam1, slc36a2, ces3, adipsin and adiponectin was confirmed by real-time PCR.

Conclusion

By comprehensively examining cellular gene responses in vivo in a whole animal model of type I diabetes, we have identified novel regulation of key endothelial transcripts that likely contribute to the metabolic and pro-inflammatory responses that accompany diabetes.