Gene arrays

CD11c⁺ cells were isolated from mouse spleens explanted from WT mice fed with standard diet (normal chow, NC), WT mice fed with high cholesterol diet (HC), ApoE^-/- mice fed with NC and ApoE^-/- mice fed with HC using CD11c MicroBeads UltraPure, MS Columns and a MiniMACS™ Separator (Miltenyi Biotec, USA). For each condition, RNA was isolated using columns including a DNAse-step followed by reverse transcription (all reagents from Qiagen, Valencia, CA). RNA was labelled and hybridized to Illumina MouseWG-6 v.2.0 Expression Bead Chips (Illumina, San Diego, USA) according to the manufacturer's instructions at the Genomics and Proteomics Core Facility of the German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg. For each sample, RNA was hybridized to a separate gene array.