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Introduction:Cigarette smoking is the major cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and of lung cancer. The molecular processes by which these two diseases develop are not clear, nor is it clear why only 15-20% of smokers develop COPD or lung cancer. Further, there are no tools currently available for the diagnosis of cancer at an early stage when it is still operable. A number of studies have shown that cigarette smoking produces a field defect, such that genetic mutations induced by smoking occur throughout the lung and its intra and extra-pulmonary airways. Based on this concept, we have begun this study, which has as its goal the definition of the normal airway transcriptome, an analysis of how that transcriptome is affected by cigarette smoke, and how the transcriptome might differ between current, former and never smokers. We have obtained brushings from intra-pulmonary airways (the right upper lobe carina) and scrapings from the buccal mucosa, from normal smoking and non-smoking volunteers. RNA was isolated from these samples and gene expression profiles from intra-pulmonary airway epithelial cells were analyzed using Affymetrix U133A human gene expression arrays. All microarray data from the experiments described above have been stored, preprocessed (for details on our preprocessing algorithms click here) and analyzed in a relational MySQL database that is accessible through this website. The navigation buttons on the left hand side of the page link you directly to various functions supported by our site. To better navigate through our site and fully utilize the tools available for mining the SiegeDB database, we suggest you familiarize yourself with the online instructions by referring to our HELP page. This page is best viewed under the resolution of 1024x768.Copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved. Trustees of Boston University. |
