Gene Microarray Study Of The Short-term Starvation In Mice Model And Human Novel Gene Cloning And Function

Starvation is an excellent model for studying the relationship between metabolism and genes, for fasting-related genes are usually further identified as metabolism modulators. Here we report a microarray research which evaluated variation of transcription levels in about 8,000 mouse genes after short-term starvation and quick re-supply of glucose afterwards. 256 genes were found to be reduced and 388 genes induced by fasting. What's more, the transcription levels of some genes were further altered by the glucose re-supply after fasting. Using clustering analysis, these genes were divided into 12 classes, whose trends of variation differed from each other.After checking the function of every gene through GeneBank, we saw that some of the genes varied consistently with the previous studies. For instance, after short-term starvation lipids are used as the main resource of energy instead of glucose. The dissimilation of fatty acids, cholesterols and amino acids is accelerated, while the assimilation of them is inhibited. And the gluconeogenesis and ketogenesis are promoted by starvation. Interestingly, we found that most of the varied genes were modulated by PPARa according to the references, which further proved the regulatory effect of PPARa on the shift of different energy metabolic pathways in mouse liver.Among the genes related to lipid synthesis there were several genes (E/ovo/s) not inhibited by fasting in our experiment, what was on the contrary to our knowledge. Elovls are involved in the synthesis of VLCFA that mainly exists in sphingolipids and takes parts in several essential physiological processes. Our results indicated that the main function of VLCFA might not be the energy reservation, and that was why its synthesis was not inhibited after short-term starvation.The results also suggested that starvation influenced the transcription of genes involved in various pathways besides energy metabolism. Interestingly, an anti-apoptosis gene (Rgn) was down-regulated by starvation. Concerning that Rgn was reported to be down-regulated in tissues of the aged, we propose the process of starvation might be some of correlated with the process of aging.In addition, the transcription of many genes with unknown function varied...