Expression profiling of mouse hippocampus from Apex1 conditional knockout and caloric restriction models across aging

The DNA repair enzyme apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease-1 (Apex1) plays a central role in base-excision repair, but its contribution to transcriptional programs associated with brain aging remains incompletely understood. In this study, we performed genome-wide expression profiling of mouse hippocampus to examine the effects of forebrain-specific Apex1 deletion and caloric restriction on age-associated transcriptional changes.

Hippocampal tissues were collected from male mice at young (8-12 weeks) and aged (48 weeks) time points across six experimental groups: young wild-type ad libitum (WT AL), young Apex1 conditional knockout ad libitum (cKO AL), aged WT AL, aged cKO AL, aged WT caloric restriction (WT CR), and aged cKO CR. Apex1 conditional knockout mice carried the genotype Camk2a-Cre+/−;Apex1^flox/flox, while hemizygous CaMKIIα-Cre+/− littermates served as age-matched controls.