Application of gene expression data to safety evaluation of chemicals
摘要
Novel cyclopedic analytical systems of DNA microassay and GeneChip enable us to analyze several thousands of genes at a time.We performed GeneChip analysis on livers from rats administered various chemicals,namely,phenobarbital,clofibrate,3-methylocolanthrene,dexamethasone,butylated hydroxyanisole,acetaminophen and cycloheximide,all of which are known to induce hypertrophy or cell death of hepatocytes.The results indicated a number of up-regulated and down-regulated genes related to each treatment.Although the obtained data is quite useful,interpretation and statistical analysis of the data should be done taking into consideration the time point of sampling and several other factors,in particular,phenotype.On the other hand,we can not disregard the possibility that gene expression change which is not related to the toxic phenotype at a glance could play a key role in inducing a novel mechanism of toxicity,and this is one useful aspect of cyclopedic analysis of gene expression profiles.