Transcriptional changes in insulin- and lipid metabolism-related genes in the hippocampus of olfactory bulbectomized mice.
Affymetrix chips were used to perform a hypothesis-free large-scale screening of transcripts in the hippocampus of olfactory bulbectomized mice, an established animal model of depression. Because only 11 transcripts were significantly changed, the statistically subsequent 25 transcripts below the significance level were additionally included in a first round of qRT-PCR evaluations. Furthermore, all 36 genes were then tested for mutual interactions or interactions with other molecules in a physiological context using PathwayArchitect software. Thirty of them were displayed in a network interacting with at least one partner molecule from the list or with other partner molecules known from the literature. All partner molecules from the most prominent 10 molecules of this network were then identified and put together into a new list. On those grounds, the hypothesis was made that metabolic network components of the insulin signaling pathway are perturbed in the disease. This pathway was subsequently tested by a second round of qRT-PCR, adding also a few additional candidate molecules belonging to this pathway. It turned out that the key target -- FABP7 -- fell into the group of transcripts not significantly regulated within the chip data, and another key target -- IRS1 -- did not show up in the chip experiments at all. In conclusion, our data reveal a problem with adhering to statistical significances in microarray experiments, insofar as molecules important for the disease may fall into the range of statistical noise. This approach may also be useful to find new targets for pharmacotherapy in affective disorders.
RG Behavioral Biology, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany. peter.gass@zi-mannheim.de
Peter
P
Gass
Fernando
F
Leonardi-Essmann
Maha
M
Zueger
Rainer
R
Spanagel
Peter J
PJ
Gebicke-Haerter
D000818:Animals; D019771:Axotomy; D003863:Depression / Q000235:genetics*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D015870:Gene Expression; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D007328:Insulin / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism*; D050356:Lipid Metabolism / Q000235:genetics*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D009830:Olfactory Bulb / Q000601:surgery; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
D007328:Insulin