Project description:Prior studies of Bangladeshi migrants in the UK revealed that reproductive function is adaptive, responding to different environments during childhood by adjusting the timing of puberty, reproductive lifespan and overall reproductive function. Here we aimed to understand the basis of this plasticity. Our goals were to establish whether epigenetic mechanisms play a role in the plasticity of this adaptive reproductive phenotype. We hypothesized that women growing up in Bangladesh would have distinct DNA methylation signatures compared to those who moved to the UK at a young age or were born to Bangladeshi parents in the UK. Some of these environmentally induced epigenetic differences would be detected in buccal cell DNA and reflect the divergent gene expression responsible for the altered reproductive function. The women of the study who grew up in Bangladesh were relatively affluent, well-nourished and rarely performed manual work, but a significant confounding factor in their early life was the level of disease load presenting a chronic immune challenge
Project description:A tissue like buccal mucosa (from cheek swabs) would be an ideal sample material for rapid, easy collection for testing of biomarkers as an alternative to blood. A limited number of studies, primarily in the smoker/oral cancer literature, address this tissue's efficacy for quantitative PCR or microarray gene expression analysis. In this study both qPCR and microarray analyses were used to evaluate gene expression in buccal cells. An initial study comparing blood and buccal cells from the same individuals looked at relative amounts of four genes. The RNA isolated from buccal cells was degraded but was of sufficient quality to be used with RT-qPCR to detect expression of specific genes. Second, buccal cell RNA was used for microarray-based differential gene expression studies by comparing gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. The isolation and amplification protocol allowed use of 150-fold less buccal cell RNA than had been reported previously with human microarrays. We report here the finding of a small number of significant gene expression differences between smokers and nonsmokers, using buccal cells as target material. Additionally, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis confirmed that these genes were changing expression in the same pattern as seen in an earlier buccal cell study performed by another group. Our results suggest that in spite of a high degree of RNA degradation, buccal cells from cheek mucosa could be used to detect differential gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. However the RNA degradation, increase in sample variability and microarray failure rate show that buccal samples should be used with caution as source material in expression studies.
Project description:Normal and two transformed buccal keratinocyte lines were cultured under a standardized condition to explore mechanisms of carcinogenesis and tumor marker expression at transcript and protein level. An approach combining three bioinformatic programs allowed coupling of abundant proteins and large-scale transcript data to low-abundance transcriptional regulators. The analysis identified previously proposed, and suggested novel, protein biomarkers, Gene Ontology categories and molecular networks including functionally impaired key regulator genes for buccal/oral carcinoma. Experiment Overall Design: Analysis of differential expression in two transformed buccal keratinocyte lines (SVpgC2a and SqCC/Y1) relative to normal buccal keratinocytes. Both normal and transformed cells were cultured under a standardized serum-free condition. Experiment Overall Design: Two replicates for all cell types were included.
Project description:Normal and two transformed buccal keratinocyte lines were cultured under a standardized condition to explore mechanisms of carcinogenesis and tumor marker expression at transcript and protein level. An approach combining three bioinformatic programs allowed coupling of abundant proteins and large-scale transcript data to low-abundance transcriptional regulators. The analysis identified previously proposed, and suggested novel, protein biomarkers, Gene Ontology categories and molecular networks including functionally impaired key regulator genes for buccal/oral carcinoma. Keywords: Cell type comparison
Project description:A tissue like buccal mucosa (from cheek swabs) would be an ideal sample material for rapid, easy collection for testing of biomarkers as an alternative to blood. A limited number of studies, primarily in the smoker/oral cancer literature, address this tissue's efficacy for quantitative PCR or microarray gene expression analysis. In this study both qPCR and microarray analyses were used to evaluate gene expression in buccal cells. An initial study comparing blood and buccal cells from the same individuals looked at relative amounts of four genes. The RNA isolated from buccal cells was degraded but was of sufficient quality to be used with RT-qPCR to detect expression of specific genes. Second, buccal cell RNA was used for microarray-based differential gene expression studies by comparing gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. The isolation and amplification protocol allowed use of 150-fold less buccal cell RNA than had been reported previously with human microarrays. We report here the finding of a small number of significant gene expression differences between smokers and nonsmokers, using buccal cells as target material. Additionally, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis confirmed that these genes were changing expression in the same pattern as seen in an earlier buccal cell study performed by another group. Our results suggest that in spite of a high degree of RNA degradation, buccal cells from cheek mucosa could be used to detect differential gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. However the RNA degradation, increase in sample variability and microarray failure rate show that buccal samples should be used with caution as source material in expression studies. Samples were collected from eight subjects, four smokers (Sm)and four nonsmokers (NS). Each cheek was sampled creating an a and b sample for each subject which is reflected in the array name. All samples were isolated separately for total RNA. Each was hybridzed to microarrays to examine for differential gene expression between smokers and nonsmokers. There are 14 total samples in the main dataset (Set 2). One cheek sample failed in microarray analysis for two individuals, 08BCNS23 a and 08BCSm27 a, and so are not included here. A sample set (Set 1) was created which contains the four samples shown in this file. They represent repeated sampling of both cheeks for two individuals to test for reproducibility. There is a separate RMA file and metadata file (this file) for these data. These included samples 08BC11Sm a and b, a smoker, and 08BC12NSa and b a nonsmoker.