This web page was produced as an assignment for Genetics 677, an undergraduate course at UW-Madison.

Microarray

Microarrays are powerful tools of molecular biologists to find out various information such as expression levels, single nucleotide polymorphisms and even to genotype mutant sequences,.Using Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO) [1], I found a microarray experiment that tests the Kras G12D heterozygous mutation effect on somatic cell line of mice. The following is an image of the cluster analysis of the results.

Retroviruses were used to insert the Kras G12D allele in the genome of mouse somatic cells[2]. Mouse cells that the KRAS cDNA was overexpressed in were readily transformed. Through this gene expression profiling, the researchers managed to define the mutated KRAS signature of 345 genes. According to them, the signature was capable of classifying mouse and human cancers according to the status of their KRAS mutation with an accuracy equal or higher than published RAS signatures.

References

1) Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/

2) Knock-in of Oncogenic Kras Does Not Transform Mouse Somatic Cells But Triggers a Transcriptional Response that Classifies Human Cancers
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/67/18/8468.abstract