Are gene expression microarray analyses reliable? A review of studies of retinoic acid responsive genes / 基因组蛋白质组与生物信息学报·英文版

Microarray analyses of gene expression are widely used, but reports of the same analyses by different groups give widely divergent results, and raise questions regarding reproducibility and reliability. We take as an example recent published reports on microarray experiments that were designed to identify retinoic acid responsive genes. These reports show substantial differences in their results. In this article, we review the methodology, results, and potential causes of differences in these applications of microarrays. Finally, we suggest practices to improve the reliability and reproducibility of microarray experiments.

Gene identification and expression analysis of 86,136 Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) from the rice genome / 基因组蛋白质组与生物信息学报·英文版

Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) analysis has pioneered genome-wide gene discovery and expression profiling. In order to establish a gene expression index in the rice cultivar indica, we sequenced and analyzed 86,136 ESTs from nine rice cDNA libraries from the super hybrid cultivar LYP9 and its parental cultivars. We assembled these ESTs into 13,232 contigs and leave 8,976 singletons. Overall, 7,497 sequences were found similar to existing sequences in GenBank and 14,711 are novel. These sequences are classified by molecular function, biological process and pathways according to the Gene Ontology. We compared our sequenced ESTs with the publicly available 95,000 ESTs from japonica, and found little sequence variation, despite the large difference between genome sequences. We then assembled the combined 173,000 rice ESTs for further analysis. Using the pooled ESTs, we compared gene expression in metabolism pathway between rice and Arabidopsis according to KEGG. We further profiled gene expression patterns in different tissues, developmental stages, and in a conditional sterile mutant, after checking the libraries are comparable by means of sequence coverage. We also identified some possible library specific genes and a number of enzymes and transcription factors that contribute to rice development.

Gene expression versus sequence for predicting function: Glia Maturation Factor gamma is not a glia maturation factor / 基因组蛋白质组与生物信息学报·英文版

It is standard practice, whenever a researcher finds a new gene, to search databases for genes that have a similar sequence. It is not standard practice, whenever a researcher finds a new gene, to search for genes that have similar expression (co-expression). Failure to perform co-expression searches has lead to incorrect conclusions about the likely function of new genes, and has lead to wasted laboratory attempts to confirm functions incorrectly predicted. We present here the example of Glia Maturation Factor gamma (GMF-gamma). Despite its name, it has not been shown to participate in glia maturation. It is a gene of unknown function that is similar in sequence to GMF-beta. The sequence homology and chromosomal location led to an unsuccessful search for GMF-gamma mutations in glioma. We examined GMF-gamma expression in 1432 human cDNA libraries. Highest expression occurs in phagocytic, antigen-presenting and other hematopoietic cells. We found GMF-gamma mRNA in almost every tissue examined, with expression in nervous tissue no higher than in any other tissue. Our evidence indicates that GMF-gamma participates in phagocytosis in antigen presenting cells. Searches for genes with similar sequences should be supplemented with searches for genes with similar expression to avoid incorrect predictions.