Figure 1. Hepatic Mfsd2a is an early response gene and is upregulated with increasing NAFLD severity in patients.
(A) Feeding regimen for NASH diet–induced fatty liver in WT mice. (B) Levels of hepatic Mfsd2a expression in WT mice fed a NASH diet relative to normal chow–fed mice over time (2 weeks, n = 7; 4 weeks, n = 7; 8 weeks, n = 6; 16 weeks, n = 6; normal chow fed controls, n = 4). Mfsd2a mRNA expression was normalized to β-actin. Data are represented as the mean ratio of normalized Mfsd2a relative to Mfsd2a expression in normal chow–fed mice ± SEM. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01, 1-way ANOVA with Dunnett’s test. (C) Hepatic Mfsd2a expression levels in individuals of normal weight (n = 14), obese individuals (n = 12), and individuals with NAFLD (n = 15) and NASH (n = 16). Normalized Mfsd2a expression was analyzed from RNA-Seq data set GSE126848. Data are expressed as normalized count. *P < 0.05, 1-way ANOVA with Tukey’s test. (D) Immunostaining of Mfsd2a in liver sections from patients without NASH (n = 5) and with NASH (n = 5). Numbers on each image correspond to patient identification numbers in Supplemental Table 1. Scale bars: 50 μm.