Comparative transcriptome analysis of Fut1 KO vs. WT splenocytes
To investigate the impact of FUT1-mediated terminal fucosylation on the
immune response in splenocytes, we isolated splenocytes from Fut1KO and WT mice, and analyzed both transcriptomes using QuantSeq 3′ mRNA
sequencing (Fig. 1A ) (13). The comparative analysis of the
transcriptomes identified a total of 124 DEGs with a fold change of
> 2 and a p value < 0.05. Among these
DEGs, 69 transcripts were significantly upregulated, whereas 55
transcripts were downregulated in Fut1 KO splenocytes when
compared to WT splenocytes (Fig. 1A-D ).
Further categorization of the DEGs based on gene ontology revealed that
7 genes related to immune or inflammatory response were upregulated,
while 4 genes were downregulated in Fut1 KO splenocytes compared
to WT splenocytes (Fig. 1C, E ). The up-regulated genes in the
immune response or inflammation categories were Gp2, Hist1h2bk,
Sdc1, Cfb, Fas and Mx1 , and the down-regulated genes includedThbs1, Orm3, Ccl24 and Tnfrsf11a (Fig. 1E).Remarkably, Thbs1 , which encodes thrombospondin-1, was the most
highly down-regulated gene (4.8-fold) in Fut1 KO splenocytes
compared to WT splenocytes.