Next, to determine whether activation of TGF-β signaling pathway was a main characteristics of gene profile changes in response to type 2 diabetes, aortic tissues isolated from a widely used type 2 diabetic rodent model, db/db mice and their controls db/m mice, were performed RNA sequencing and finally 1049 up-regulated and 1043 down-regulated differentially expressed genes were screened out for further analysis (Fig. 5A, Additional file 5: Table S5). This evidence concerns the gene TGFB1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus.