Background and objectives: Several molecular biology techniques are utilized to study changes in gene expression during the genesis of human tumors. Our objective was to identify genes that showed altered expression between normal brain tissue (NBT) and glioblastoma multiforme tumor tissue (GMTT).
Methods: The technique of differential hybridization of two Atlas Human cDNA expression array was used. In this technique, dCTP32-labeled complimentary DNA from NBT and GMTT was hybridized to two identical human cDNA expression array membranes containing 588 known genes.
Results: Autoradiographic analysis showed that of the 588 genes analyzed, 52 are overexpressed in GMTT and 57 in NBT. A gene-specific semiquantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method was used to confirm the expression pattern of seven known genes. RT-PCR results demonstrate that the expression pattern of a majority of genes agreed with the expression pattern observed on expression array. The known tumor suppressor genes retinoblastoma (RB) and p53 showed loss of expression in GMTT compared with NBT.
Conclusions: We conclude that the differential hybridization technique of Atlas Human cDNA expression array can be a useful method in identifying genes that are differentially expressed either in NBT or GMTT.