Biology Open (Jul 2016)

A lipidomics study reveals hepatic lipid signatures associating with deficiency of the LDL receptor in a rat model

  • Hong Yu Wang,
  • Chao Quan,
  • Chunxiu Hu,
  • Bingxian Xie,
  • Yinan Du,
  • Liang Chen,
  • Wei Yang,
  • Liu Yang,
  • Qiaoli Chen,
  • Bin Shen,
  • Bian Hu,
  • Zhihong Zheng,
  • Haibo Zhu,
  • Xingxu Huang,
  • Guowang Xu,
  • Shuai Chen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1242/bio.019802
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 7
pp. 979 – 986

Abstract

Read online

The low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) plays a critical role in the liver for the clearance of plasma low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Its deficiency causes hypercholesterolemia in many models. To facilitate the usage of rats as animal models for the discovery of cholesterol-lowering drugs, we took a genetic approach to delete the LDLR in rats aiming to increase plasma LDL cholesterol (LDL-C). An LDLR knockout rat was generated via zinc-finger nuclease technology, which harbors a 19-basepair deletion in the seventh exon of the ldlr gene. As expected, deletion of the LDLR elevated total cholesterol and total triglyceride in the plasma, and caused a tenfold increase of plasma LDL-C and a fourfold increase of plasma very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL-C). A lipidomics analysis revealed that deletion of the LDLR affected hepatic lipid metabolism, particularly lysophosphatidylcholines, free fatty acids and sphingolipids in the liver. Cholesterol ester (CE) 20:4 also displayed a significant increase in the LDLR knockout rats. Taken together, the LDLR knockout rat offers a new model of hypercholesterolemia, and the lipidomics analysis reveals hepatic lipid signatures associating with deficiency of the LDL receptor.

Keywords