High-throughput sequencing provides an insight into the hepatotoxicity mechanism of MC-LR in HepG2 cells

Abstract

In this study, the high-throughput sequencing analysis of the transcriptome of hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) cells after 24 h of microcystin-LR (MC-LR)-treatment was performed to investigate the hepatotoxicity mechanism of MC-LR. The results showed that a total of 532 and 984 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were found in cells after 0.5 and 50 μM of MC-LR-exposure, respectively, which was confirmed by the results of quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Moreover, the functional analyzes of DEGs showed that MC-LR-exposure caused alterations in multiple signaling pathways, such as NF-κB, p53 and T-cell receptor pathways, which suggested that these pathways may be involved in MC-LR-hepatotoxicity and play an important role in human hepatitis and primary liver cancer caused by MC-LR.

Keywords:

• Microcystin-LR
• HepG2
• high-throughput sequencing
• hepatotoxicity
• GO analysis
• KEGG enrichment

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31472285), the Innovation Scientists and Technicians Troop Construction Projects of Henan Province, China (Grant No. 164200510001), the Youth Science Fund of Henan Normal University, and the Ph.D. Research Startup Foundation of Henan Normal University.

Declaration of interest

All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Supplementary material available online