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.