【Abstract】 Objective To investigate the gene expression alteration in the brain tissue of neural tubedefects (NTDs) fetal mice of C57BL/6J induced by 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). Methods Specifific pathogen free(SPF) C57BL/6J pregnant mice were randomly divided into the experimental group and the control group.5-FU (12.5 mg/kg), thymidine synthase inhibitor, was injected intraperitoneally into pregnant C57BL/6Jmice in the experimental group on gestational day 7.5. The pregnant mice in the control group wereintraperitoneally injected with equal volume of normal saline. The malformation and neural tube closure werecarefully observed by stereomicroscope and hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining on gestational day 13.5. Theexpression of different genes was studied by microarray and verifified by real-time quantitative polymerasechain reaction (RT-qPCR). The statistics analysis was performed with t test. Results The incidence ofNTDs was 42.31% (22/52), especially exencephaly in the experimental group. There were no NTDs in thecontrol group. The structure of telencephalon and hindbrain were abnormal in NTD mice by HE staining. The137 genes were signifificantly difference in NTD mice compared with the control group, of which 40 geneswere up-regulated and 97 genes were down-regulated. These genes were mainly involved in the biological
processes of multicellular organismal development, cell proliferation, differentiation, and the important
pathways related to brain development. Avp, Hes3 and Wnt1 genes, which were neural development related
genes, were chosen and validated by RT-qPCR to show the signifificantly abnormal expressions in NTD brain
tissues. Conclusion 5-FU might affect the expressions of the Avp, Hes3 and Wnt1 genes related to neural
development during the process of embryonic brain development, and then lead to the occurrence of NTDs.