Cell cycle profile data on splenocytes of high fat diet induced obese mice treated with ferulic acid

The reported data are related to the article entitled “Ferulic acid maintains the self-renewal capacity of embryo stem cells and adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells in high fat diet-induced obese mice” [1]. Ferulic acid is a natural bioactive compound and demonstrated potential to serve as a self-renewing biomarker in an alkaline phosphate assay and caused increased Nanog mRNA levels in embryonic stem cells. In these data, we examined another functional aspect of ferulic acid, namely the effect of ferulic acid on the cell cycle of splenocytes. These data were collected from the splenocytes of C57BL/6 J male mice that were fed either a high fat diet (HFD) alone or an HFD diet supplemented with ferulic acid (5 g/kg diet) for 8 weeks. As expected, the HFD resulted in a significant increase in mouse body weight, liver weight, and epididymal fat tissue weight compared to the control diet (Cho and Park, 2020). The cell cycle profile of mouse splenocytes in HFD-induced obese mice was evaluated by FACS. Since the G1 checkpoint is the point at which cells enter the cell cycle, an internal or external stimulation can cause the cell to delay passing G1 and instead enter a quiescent state known as G0 without proceeding past the restriction checkpoint. DNA damage is the main trigger that can cause a cell to "restrict" itself and not enter the cell cycle [2]. These results show that ferulic acid helps attenuate G1/S arrest in splenocytes in HFD-induced obese mice.