New microscopic technology allows researchers to place tens of thousands of genes on 1.5-inch-square slides known as a microarray. In this case, researchers used the GeneChip Canine Genome Array, a newly available commercial microarray specifically designed for dogs and containing more than 23,000 genes. With it, they performed global genome-expression profiling to focus on the transcription (the level of genetic coding into messenger RNA) of the genes taken from five healthy dogs and two Dobermans with DCM.
In the affected dogs, 478 transcripts were significantly different from those in the tissue of the control animals. Of these transcripts, 173 were increased (up regulated) while 305 were lowered (down regulated). From this pool, the researchers identified 167 genes that may play a role in the development and progression of DCM.
The findings of the work, which was done at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine and the State University of New York at Albany, are reported in the July issue of the American Journal of Veterinary Research.
"Finding altered activity of a gene doesn't necessarily mean that it is a cause of the disease," said Mark A. Oyama, a veterinary cardiologist in the department of veterinary clinical medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "What a gene microarray tells us is more about the overall patterns of disease and how the heart responds to it. Genes that are up or down regulated may be the root cause, but we don't know that. What this experiment really does is narrow down the population of 23,000-plus genes to those that we should stu
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Contact: Jim Barlow, Life Sciences Editor
jebarlow@uiuc.edu
217-333-5802
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
5-Jul-2005