RNA-seq experiment to investigate the effect sulforaphane metabolism in HepG2 cells (human hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines). Cells treated with sulforaphane were compared against untreated cells in three different glucose environments: no glucose, basal and high glucose, to study the transcriptional effect of sulforaphane on liver cells at different metabolic states.
Over the past six years, literature has shown that sulforaphane (SF) can affect a wide range of genes involved in central metabolism, such as glycolysis, pentose phosphate pathway, TCA cycle, lipid biosynthesis and oxidation. In this experiment, RNA sequencing was performed on HepG2 cells in three glucose environments: no glucos (0 mM), basal (5 mM), and high glucose (25 mM). These environments represent fasting, healthy and insulin-resistant hepatocytes, treated with physiological concentrations (10 µM) SF for 24 h. Differential expression analysis is performed to determine the effect of SF on the transcriptional changes in three different metabolic states in the liver. This experiment addresses the following questions: 1) how do the NRF2 target genes respond under different metabolic states?, and 2) does SF affects the gene expression of genes linked to central metabolism in hepatocytes under different metabolic states?