Identification of functional features underlying heat stress response in Sprague-Dawley rats using mixed linear models

Since global temperature is expected to rise by 2℃ in 2050 heat stress may become the most severe environmental factor. In the study, we illustrate the application of mixed linear models for the analysis of whole transcriptome expression in livers and adrenal tissues of Sprague-Dawley rats obtained by a heat stress experiment. By applying those models, we considered four sources of variation in transcript expression, comprising transcripts (1), genes (2), Gene Ontology terms (3), and Reactome pathways (4) and focussed on accounting for the similarity within each source, which was expressed as a covariance matrix. Models based on transcripts or genes levels explained a larger proportion of log 2 fold change than models fitting the functional components of Gene Ontology terms or Reactome pathways. In the liver, among the most significant genes were PNKD and TRIP12 . In the adrenal tissue, one transcript of the SUCO gene was expressed more strongly in the control group than in the heat-stress group. PLEC had two transcripts, which were significantly overexpressed in the heat-stress group. PER3 was significant only on gene level. Moving to the functional scale, five Gene Ontologies and one Reactome pathway were significant in the liver. They can be grouped into ontologies related to DNA repair, histone ubiquitination, the regulation of embryonic development and cytoplasmic translation. Linear mixed models are valuable tools for the analysis of high-throughput biological data. Their main advantages are the possibility to incorporate information on covariance between observations and circumventing the problem of multiple testing.