Fig. 3. Comprehensive RNA-seq and metabolomic analyses revealed that CRTC3 regulates unsaturated fatty acid metabolism and ferroptosis.
a KEGG enrichment analyses of differentially expressed genes following CRTC3 knockout. The metabolic pathways, ferroptosis, and its related pathways were significantly enriched. b Heatmaps of gene hits in the ferroptosis gene set. ACSL5, SLC7A11, and GPx4 were upregulated, and LPCAT3 was downregulated following CRTC3 knockout. c GSEA revealed that ferroptosis and GSH metabolism gene sets were positively correlated with CRTC3 knockout. d MSEA of differentially abundant metabolites revealed significant enrichments in unsaturated fatty acids biosynthesis pathways and ferroptosis-related pathways. e MSEA of differentially abundant lipids revealed significant enrichments in pathways of unsaturated fatty acid biosynthesis and fatty acid degradation. f Volcano plots for altered metabolites in negative ion modes and positive ion modes. A wide range of PUFAs were markedly increased following CRTC3 knockout.