Fig. 5

Ubr5 ablation in liver blocks hepatocyte differentiation and maturation. a Schematic illustration for the generation of conditional Ubr5 knockout mice. Exon 6 and exon 7 were deleted upon Cre-mediated recombination. b Schematic hepatocyte isolation by liver perfusion. c Western blot examination of Ubr5 protein level in WT (wild-type) and KO liver (3 weeks). Vinculin was used as a loading control. Uncropped Western blot images are provided in Additional File 1: Fig. S12. d Immunohistochemistry analysis of hepatic makers (Mup, Ttr, and Hnf4α) and hepatoblast maker Afp in WT and KO liver (3 weeks). Scale bars, 200 μm. Magnification = 2.5 × . e Serum Albumin levels in WT and Ubr5 KO mice. Data were represented as mean ± s.e.m. (n = 6) and compared by two-tailed Student’s t test, significance was set at a P-value less than 0.05. f Clustered heatmap of differentially expressed genes (|log2FoldChange|< 1 and adjusted P-value using BH methods < 0.05) in perfused hepatocytes from WT and Ubr5 KO mice (n = 3). Selected genes were indicated in right. g The top 10 enriched GO-BP terms (sorted by adjusted P-values using the BH method) of significantly differentially expressed genes in the liver of Ubr5 conditional KO mice compared to their wild-type counterparts. h, i Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) of selected gene sets encoding products related to mature hepatocyte (h) or hepatoblast (i), presented as normalized enrichment score (NES). j Representative hepatic gene expression in liver tissues from WT and Ubr5 KO mice at different time point after birth. Histone H3 was used as an internal control. The data were represented as mean ± s.e.m. (n = 3) and tested by one-tailed Student’s t test. Only statistically significant comparisons (P-value < 0.05) were marked on the graph