Impact of high-phosphate diet on aortic gene expression

Uremic media calcification is not only driven by systemic factors such as hyperphosphatemia, but also crticially dependent on vascular smooth muscle cells per se. We hypothesized that the different developmental origins of vscular smooth muscle cells might lead to a heterogeneous susceptibility to develop media calcification. Upon high-phosphate diet, the transcriptional profile revealed an induction of an inflammatory vascular smooth muscle phenotype only in the abdominal, but not in the thoracic aorta. Thus, smooth muscle cells from different lineages responded differently to morphogenetic cues in vivo. We analyzed 3-4 replicates of the thoracic and abdominal aorta, which were previously exposed to either high-phosphate diet (HPD) or standard chow diet (SCD), respectively.