Effect of depletion of C10orf71 on gene expression in hearts from embryonic mice at E18.5 and adult mice

To explore the specific functional and cellular processes that affected by the mC10orf71 deletion, we compared total RNA expression in hearts from E18.5. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis showed that down-regulated genes were not significantly enriched in any biological process. The 327 genes up-regulated in KO mice were enriched for energy generation, electron transport chain and ATP synthesis, and many of them are encoded by mitochondrial DNA. These changes were likely to be a compensatory response to the impaired morphogenesis and dysfunction of the KO hearts. Then, we performed RNA-seq on hearts of adult WT and KO mice. GO analysis of down-regulated genes identified two categories of biological processes: mRNA processing/splicing and muscle cell differentiation/contraction.