| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |





From the Departments of Urology* and Pathology,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
| Abstract |
|---|
|
|
|---|
One specific area of concern is the effect of ischemia on the profile of differential gene expression. Microarray technology has identified some putative prostate cancer biomarkers such as hepsin and
-methylacyl-CoA racemase (AMACR).3,4,8,9
However other putative candidates need to be further characterized. In this process it is important to exclude spuriously deregulated genes because of such technical artifacts such as prolonged warm ischemia before processing. This may be a more important issue within the early time period after surgical extirpation when the cellular metabolic machinery can mount a survival or apoptotic response before all metabolic activity ceases. Conversely genes that appear down-regulated could represent an artifact of RNA degradation with prolonged warm ischemia time. Some genes may also have greater susceptibility to degradation. Negative expression, therefore, is more difficult to ascertain because there is no way to distinguish decreased expression from degradation. Thus we proposed to study the increase in the differential gene expression profile throughout time of prostate tissue obtained from radical prostatectomy specimens removed as treatment for localized prostate cancer and identify individual genes that may be artifacts of processing.
| Materials and Methods |
|---|
|
|
|---|
The spotted glass cDNA microarray slides used in this study included
5000 known, named genes from the Research Genetics human cDNA clone set, 4400 expressed sequence tags.3
Fluorescently labeled (Cy5) cDNA was prepared from total RNA from each of the ischemia time points. The reference zero (0 hour) samples used in this study were labeled using a second distinguishable fluorescent dye (Cy3) using a previously established protocol (www.microarrays.org). After labeling, the cDNA samples were neutralized, washed, and then applied to the microarray chips. After remaining in a hybridization water bath at 65°C overnight, the microarray slides were processed and scanned with a Genepix 4000 scanner.
Primary analysis was done using the Genepix software package. Images of scanned microarrays were gridded and linked to a gene print list. Initially, data were viewed as a scatter plot of Cy3 versus Cy5 intensities. Cy3 to Cy5 ratios are determined for the individual genes along with various other quality-control parameters (eg, intensity over local background). The Genepix software analysis package flags spots as absent based on spot characteristics. Furthermore, bad spots or areas of the array with obvious defects were manually flagged. Spots with small diameters (<50 µm) and spots with low signal strengths <350 fluorescence intensity units over local background in the more intense channel were discarded. Flagged spots were not included in subsequent analyses. Data are the ratio of the fluorescent cDNA probe signal hybridized against each time point to the reference 0-hour time point including the 0-hour time point itself.
Analysis introduced by ischemia time used a method, previously described, in comparing microarray quality that we have used to compare experimental samples.10,11 Briefly, we created a M-A plot where M = log (Cy5/Cy3) is the log ratio of the two dyes used in the hybridization, and A = [log (Cy5) + log (Cy3)]/2 is the average of the log intensities. In our experiments, the Cy5-labeled time point and the Cy3-labeled 0-time reference were hybridized together. The M-A plot of the 1-hour point hybridization (1-hour Cy5 labeled versus 0-hour Cy3 labeled) is compared to the 0-time point hybridization (Cy5 labeled 0 hour versus 0-hour Cy3 labeled). We summarized the intensity data by taking the averaging Cy3 and Cy5 intensities for all of the genes for the four time courses at the 0-hour and 1-hour time points separately.
To identify statistically significant genes induced by ischemia, we analyzed our data from the four time courses with Statistical Analysis of Microarray (SAM) software (Stanford University, Stanford, CA), as previously described.12 Briefly, SAM performs repetitive permutations based on gene-specific t-tests to identify statistically significant genes. Adjustment of a delta-tuning parameter can alter the number of false-positives, and use of threshold parameters instructs that magnitude of expression change meets cutoff requirements. Only overexpressed genes were analyzed because of the potential confounding effect of RNA degradation contributing to the number of underexpressed genes. In this experiment we used a delta of 0.20, upper threshold of 2.5-fold overexpression, and 0.4-fold under expression using a one class comparison at the 1-hour time point, because the reference in each hybridization was the 0-hour time point. The 1-hour time point was chosen because most surgical specimens are realistically processed within this time frame. Some of the genes of interest identified by SAM along with genes involved in prostate cancer were plotted together as a heat map using the Cluster/TreeView program (Stanford University).
Western blot analysis of time course was performed for one of the genes of interest, early growth response 1 (EGR1), with a readily available commercial antibody. The Western blot was performed as a time course from a single one of the prostates used in the cDNA expression microarray at the same time points. Tissues were homogenized in Nonidet P-40 lysis buffer containing 50 mmol/L Tris-HCl, pH 7.4, 1% Nonidet P-40 (Sigma, St. Louis, MO), and complete proteinase inhibitor cocktail tablet (Roche, Indianapolis, IN). After quantification using a standard Bradford assay, 15 µg of tissue protein extracts were mixed with sodium dodecyl sulfate sample buffer and electrophoresed onto a 10% sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel under reducing conditions. The separated proteins were transferred onto a nitrocellulose membrane (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Piscataway, NJ). The membrane was incubated for 1 hour in blocking buffer [Tris-buffered saline with 0.1% Tween (TBS-T) with 5% nonfat dry milk]. The EGR1 antibody (Santa Cruz Biotechnologies, Santa Cruz, CA) was applied at 1:1000 dilution in blocking buffer overnight at 4°C. After washing three times with TBS-T buffer, the membrane was incubated with horseradish peroxidase-linked donkey anti-rabbit IgG antibody (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech) at 1:5000 for 1 hour at room temperature. The signals were visualized with the chemiluminescence enhanced chemiluminescence detection system (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech) and autoradiography. For ß-tubulin control, the EGR1 antibody probed membrane was stripped with Western Re-Probe buffer (Geno-tech, St. Louis, MO) and blocked in TBS-T with 5% nonfat dry milk and incubated with rabbit anti-ß-tubulin antibodies (Santa Cruz Biotechnologies) at 1:500 for 2 hours. Visualization was performed after application of the secondary antibody as described above.
| Results |
|---|
|
|
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
| Discussion |
|---|
|
|
|---|
To our knowledge, Huang and colleagues17 were the first to study the effects of ischemia on the gene expression profile probed by cDNA microarrays. These investigators were interested in the general pattern of expression in colon cancer changes secondary to the ischemic effect. They used a latent class model to observe a change from the average gene expression. This study preliminarily established that ischemia alters the gene expression profile in tissue, but was severely limited by analyzing only one specimen and using a cell line as the reference.
Our study is the first to introduce the concept of systemic sample effect. In our experiments this effect was because of the ischemia time of tissue processing. By performing our time-course experiments independently on four samples, we have mitigated the problem of false-positives introduced by a lack of replicates to identify a group of genes that are overexpressed in prostate tissue solely because of ischemia.18 For at least one of these genes, EGR1, we were also able to demonstrate increased protein expression throughout time.
Our study presumed that there would be altered gene expression throughout time; interestingly however, there was little overall increase in the gene expression variability present with ischemia time, as depicted in the M-A plots. We assumed that we would not be able to distinguish degradation from decreased expression; therefore we pursued genes with a pattern of expression that peaked at 1 hour. In our radical prostatectomy harvesting protocol, most surgical specimens are routinely processed within 30 minutes after surgical extirpation. However, keeping in mind the logistics of transporting the freshly extirpated specimen, and accessioning, examining, and sectioning the specimen, we believed that 1 hour would be a realistic time frame before the specimen can be frozen to prevent further RNA degradation. With this time course in mind, we identified four reference genes: EGR1, Jun B, Jun D, and ATF3 that increased in expression throughout time. The longer time points were examined as extreme examples for radical prostatectomy samples. However, in some of our prostate cancer-profiling work, we have used advanced tumor from a rapid autopsy program, in which samples may be harvested up to 3 to 5 hours after death.19
Several studies have now begun to exploit the high-throughput capabilities of cDNA microarray to obtain a molecular profile of prostate cancer.3-7,20 Several interesting genes that play a putative role in prostate cancer have been identified. These notably include two genes that have aroused interest recently, hepsin3-6 and AMACR.8,9 The usefulness of the present study is to evaluate whether the processing time may influence the gene expression profile for prostate tissue specimens. Although we identified several genes with a statistically significant increase in expression at 1 hour, none of the recently reported genes involved in prostate cancer development appeared to be dramatically affected by ischemia time.
Of the 41 significant named genes that met our criteria for overexpression at 1 hour, several have been identified in the literature for increased expression secondary to ischemic stress. Jun B and jun D transcript levels are elevated after cerebral ischemia in animal models.14,15 Activating transcription factor 3 (ATF3) is induced by ischemia in a variety of tissues including heart, liver, kidney, and brain.16 In most tissue types ATF3 mRNA expression is increased within 2 hours of the insult.16 EGR1 appears to function as a master switch to activate several cellular responses to ischemic stress rapidly after the insult.13 Most of the overexpressed genes we identified were not related to prostate cancer; except for one of these genes, EGR1.21,22 Eid and colleagues21 compared EGR1 expression in prostate cancer from transurethral prostatectomy and total prostatectomy specimens from men with untreated disease versus normal prostate obtained during autopsy of organ donors. EGR1 mRNA expression was elevated in prostate cancer by Northern blot analysis. In situ hybridization confirmed the finding and showed expression mainly confined to the epithelium. Quantitative in situ hybridization revealed increased EGR1 expression with higher Gleason grade cancer. Finally EGR1 protein was confined to the epithelium by immunohistochemistry, a finding confirmed by others.22 In our study, in which the relative expression of all genes were compared to their 0-hour time point for all time points, we found EGR1 to be exemplary of a gene with increased expression with ischemia time. In contrast, the relative expression of hepsin, a gene whose overexpression has been confirmed in several studies and been validated by Northern blot analysis and immunohistochemistry,3 remained constant throughout the time course. That two genes previously identified with prostate cancer could have different expression patterns with ischemia time would imply that some prostate cancer genes might be more susceptible to ischemia. EGR1 in particular may be such a gene because of its central role in the cellular response to ischemia.13 Alternatively, increased gene expression is the artifact of tissue processing that could have begun with tissue ischemia while ligating the blood supply to the prostate during surgery that continued until freezing, although this source of error should have been minimized by using a 0-time point as the reference during hybridizations.
Based on the work of Huang and colleagues23 and the current study, confirmation of differentially expressed genes by cDNA analysis is critical. In our study a pattern of gene expression including EGR1, jun B, jun D, and ATF 3 suggests an ischemia effect. We recommend analyzing prostate cancer cDNA microarray data circumspectly if this pattern is present. Furthermore, in this study we validated EGR1 expression with Western blot analysis, but various other confirmation techniques are available and should be used before overstating the potential role of a biomarker.
| Conclusion |
|---|
|
|
|---|
| Footnotes |
|---|
Supported by the Specialized Program in Research Excellence in Prostate Cancer (P50 CA69568) and the National Cancer Institute (to M. A. R. and A. M. C.).
A. T. and I. P. M. contributed equally to this work.
Accepted for publication August 2, 2002.
| References |
|---|
|
|
|---|
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
M. Asslaber and K. Zatloukal Biobanks: transnational, European and global networks Brief Funct Genomic Proteomic, October 4, 2007; (2007) elm023v1. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
D. W. Lin, I. M. Coleman, S. Hawley, C. Y. Huang, R. Dumpit, D. Gifford, P. Kezele, H. Hung, B. S. Knudsen, A. R. Kristal, et al. Influence of Surgical Manipulation on Prostate Gene Expression: Implications for Molecular Correlates of Treatment Effects and Disease Prognosis J. Clin. Oncol., August 10, 2006; 24(23): 3763 - 3770. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
P. G. Febbo and P. W. Kantoff Noise and Bias in Microarray Analysis of Tumor Specimens J. Clin. Oncol., August 10, 2006; 24(23): 3719 - 3721. [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
J S Reis-Filho, C Westbury, and J-Y Pierga The impact of expression profiling on prognostic and predictive testing in breast cancer. J. Clin. Pathol., March 1, 2006; 59(3): 225 - 231. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
S G Jhavar, C Fisher, A Jackson, S A Reinsberg, N Dennis, A Falconer, D Dearnaley, S E Edwards, S M Edwards, M O Leach, et al. Processing of radical prostatectomy specimens for correlation of data from histopathological, molecular biological, and radiological studies: a new whole organ technique J. Clin. Pathol., May 1, 2005; 58(5): 504 - 508. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
W. E. Grizzle, W. Bell, and K. C. Sexton Best Practices and Challenges in Collecting and Processing Human Tissues to Support Biomedical Research Am. Assoc. Cancer Res. Educ. Book, April 1, 2005; 2005(1): 305 - 310. [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
S. Imbeaud, E. Graudens, V. Boulanger, X. Barlet, P. Zaborski, E. Eveno, O. Mueller, A. Schroeder, and C. Auffray Towards standardization of RNA quality assessment using user-independent classifiers of microcapillary electrophoresis traces Nucleic Acids Res., March 30, 2005; 33(6): e56 - e56. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| HOME | HELP | FEEDBACK | SUBSCRIPTIONS | ARCHIVE | SEARCH | TABLE OF CONTENTS |