BioProject

In order to study the heart disorder that the long term, high energy diet caused, Bama miniature pigs were fed a high-fat, high-sucrose diet for 23 months. These pigs developed symptoms of metabolic syndrome and showed cardiac steatosis and hypertrophy with a greatly increased heart weight (1.82-fold, P<0.05) and heart volume (1.60-fold, P<0.05) compared with the control pigs. To understand the molecular mechanisms of cardiac steatosis and hypertrophy, nine pig heart cRNA samples were hybridized to porcine GeneChips. Overall design: The control group consisted of 6 Bama pigs fed a control diet, and the HFHSD group comprised 6 pigs that were induced with a HFHS diet, which included 37% sucrose, 53% control diet and 10% pork lard. The pigs were fed twice every day and provided water ad libitum for 23 months. The pigs were fasted for 12 hours and euthanized with ketamine and xylazine. Pig hearts from the HFHSD group pigs (120, 126, 138, 140, 144, and 146) and three control group pigs (157, 159, and 161) were sampled and preserved in liquid nitrogen and then for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays.