Mixed Solvents as Tools to Study the Structural Aspects of Cytochrome P450 in Solution at Sub-Zero Temperatures

Cytochromes P450 from various sources are known to have mixtures of different heme-iron electronic configurations, partly in thermodynamic equilibrium, reflecting different configurations of the protein. Organic solvents (such as ethylene glycol or glycerol) as well as temperature changes have a marked but reversible effect on the thermodynamic parameters of these equilibria in the fluid state. The solvent and temperature perturbation of the conformational or spin state equilibrium have been investigated on various redox states of cytochrome P450 in order to gain some insight · into the structure of the heme pocket

Dynamics of Electron Transport in Cytochrome P450 Systems Studied at Sub-Zero Temperature

Experimentation in fluid mixed solvents (1 : 1 v/v phosphate buffer ethylene glycol) at sub-zero temperatures has permitted us to record the two univalent reductions of the bacterial cytochrome P450 by the natural electron donor putidaredoxin, without recycling or alternative pathway reactions. Dynamic evidence shows the formation of putidaredoxincytochrome complexes prior to electron transfer. The complex formation is rate limiting in the first reduction and in our experimental conditions. The kinetics of binding between the two oxidized proteins has also been recorded in the same medium under various conditions of concentration, temperature and ionic strength. At very low ionic strength, the rate is limited by electrostatic repulsion between the two negatively charge proteins; above I = 0.03 this effect appears negligible and the affinity seems to be governed by hydrophobic interaction free energy

Depolarisation cooling of an atomic cloud

We propose a cooling scheme based on depolarisation of a polarised cloud of trapped atoms. Similar to adiabatic demagnetisation, we suggest to use the coupling between the internal spin reservoir of the cloud and the external kinetic reservoir via dipolar relaxation to reduce the temperature of the cloud. By optical pumping one can cool the spin reservoir and force the cooling process. In case of a trapped gas of dipolar chromium atoms, we show that this cooling technique can be performed continuously and used to approach the critical phase space density for BECComment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Characterization of whole blood gene expression profiles as a sequel to globin mRNA reduction in patients with sickle cell disease

Global transcriptome analysis of whole blood RNA using microarrays has been proven to be challenging due to the high abundance of globin transcripts that constitute 70% of whole blood mRNA. This is a particular problem in patients with sickle cell disease, secondary to the high abundance of globin-expressing nucleated red blood cells and reticulocytes in the circulation. In order to accurately measure the steady state blood transcriptome in sickle cell patients we evaluated the efficacy of reducing globin transcripts in PAXgene stabilized RNA for genome-wide transcriptome analyses using microarrays. We demonstrate here by both microarrays and Q-PCR that the globin mRNA depletion method resulted in 55-65 fold reduction in globin transcripts in whole blood collected from healthy volunteers and sickle cell disease patients. This led to an improvement in microarray data quality by reducing data variability, with increased detection rate of expressed genes and improved overlap with the expression signatures of isolated peripheral blood mononuclear (PBMC) preparations. Analysis of differences between the whole blood transcriptome and PBMC transcriptome revealed important erythrocyte genes that participate in sickle cell pathogenesis and compensation. The combination of globin mRNA reduction after whole-blood RNA stabilization represents a robust clinical research methodology for the discovery of biomarkers for hematologic diseases

Use of bioanalyzer electropherograms for quality control and target evaluation in microarray expression profiling studies of ocular tissues

Expression profiling with DNA microarrays has been used to examine the transcriptome of a wide spectrum of vertebrate cells and tissues. The sensitivity and accuracy of the data generated is dependent on the quality and composition of the input RNA. In this report, we examine the quality and array performance of over 200 total RNA samples extracted from ocular tissues and cells that have been processed in a microarray core laboratory over a 7-year period. Total RNA integrity and cRNA target size distribution were assessed using the 2100 Bioanalyzer. We present Affymetrix GeneChip array performance metrics for different ocular samples processed according to a standard microarray assay workflow including several quality control checkpoints. Our review of ocular sample performance in the microarray assay demonstrates the value of considering tissue-specific characteristics in evaluating array data. Specifically, we show that Bioanalyzer electropherograms reveal highly abundant mRNAs in lacrimal gland targets that are correlated with variation in array assay performance. Our results provide useful benchmarks for other gene expression studies of ocular systems

Gene expression profiling of human whole blood samples with the Illumina WG-DASL assay

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Microarray-based gene expression analysis of peripheral whole blood is a common strategy in the development of clinically relevant biomarker panels for a variety of human diseases. However, the results of such an analysis are often plagued by decreased sensitivity and reliability due to the effects of relatively high levels of globin mRNA in whole blood. Globin reduction assays have been shown to overcome such effects, but they require large amounts of total RNA and may induce distinct gene expression profiles. The Illumina whole genome DASL assay can detect gene expression levels using partially degraded RNA samples and has the potential to detect rare transcripts present in highly heterogeneous whole blood samples without the need for globin reduction. We assessed the utility of the whole genome DASL assay in an analysis of peripheral whole blood gene expression profiles.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We find that gene expression detection is significantly increased with the use of whole genome DASL compared to the standard IVT-based direct hybridization. Additionally, globin-probe negative whole genome DASL did not exhibit significant improvements over globin-probe positive whole genome DASL. Globin reduction further increases the detection sensitivity and reliability of both whole genome DASL and IVT-based direct hybridization with little effect on raw intensity correlations. Raw intensity correlations between total RNA and globin reduced RNA were 0.955 for IVT-based direct hybridization and 0.979 for whole genome DASL.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Overall, the detection sensitivity of the whole genome DASL assay is higher than the IVT-based direct hybridization assay, with or without globin reduction, and should be considered in conjunction with globin reduction methods for future blood-based gene expression studies.</p

Gene expression analyses in breast cancer epidemiology: the Norwegian Women and Cancer postgenome cohort study

Introduction The introduction of high-throughput technologies, also called -omics technologies, into epidemiology has raised the need for high-quality observational studies to reduce several sources of error and bias. Methods The Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) postgenome cohort study consists of approximately 50,000 women born between 1943 and 1957 who gave blood samples between 2003 and 2006 and filled out a two-page questionnaire. Blood was collected in such a way that RNA is preserved and can be used for gene expression analyses. The women are part of the NOWAC study consisting of 172,471 women 30 to 70 years of age at recruitment from 1991 to 2006 who answered one to three questionnaires on diet, medication use, and lifestyle. In collaboration with the Norwegian Breast Cancer Group, every NOWAC participant born between 1943 and 1957 who is admitted to a collaborating hospital for a diagnostic biopsy or for surgery of breast cancer will be asked to donate a tumor biopsy and two blood samples. In parallel, at least three controls are approached for each breast cancer case in order to obtain blood samples from at least two controls per case. The controls are drawn at random from NOWAC matched by time of follow-up and age. In addition, 400 normal breast tissues as well as blood samples will be collected among healthy women participating at the Norwegian Mammography Screening program at the Breast Imaging Center at the University Hospital of North-Norway, Tromsø. Results The NOWAC postgenome cohort offers a unique opportunity (a) to study blood-derived gene expression profiles as a diagnostic test for breast cancer in a nested case-control design with adjustment for confounding factors related to different exposures, (b) to improve the reliability and accuracy of this approach by adjusting for an individual's genotype (for example, variants in genes coding for hormone and drug-metabolizing and detoxifying enzymes), (c) to study gene expression profiles from peripheral blood as surrogate tissue to biomonitor defined exposure (for example, hormone) and its association with disease risk (that is, breast cancer), and (d) to study gene variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms and copy number variations) and environmental exposure (endogenous and exogenous hormones) and their influence on the incidence of different molecular subtypes of breast cancer. Conclusion The NOWAC postgenome cohort combining a valid epidemiological approach with richness of biological samples should make an important contribution to the study of the etiology and system biology of breast cancer

Investigation of Variation in Gene Expression Profiling of Human Blood by Extended Principle Component Analysis

BACKGROUND: Human peripheral blood is a promising material for biomedical research. However, various kinds of biological and technological factors result in a large degree of variation in blood gene expression profiles. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Human peripheral blood samples were drawn from healthy volunteers and analysed using the Human Genome U133Plus2 Microarray. We applied a novel approach using the Principle Component Analysis and Eigen-R(2) methods to dissect the overall variation of blood gene expression profiles with respect to the interested biological and technological factors. The results indicated that the predominating sources of the variation could be traced to the individual heterogeneity of the relative proportions of different blood cell types (leukocyte subsets and erythrocytes). The physiological factors like age, gender and BMI were demonstrated to be associated with 5.3% to 9.2% of the total variation in the blood gene expression profiles. We investigated the gene expression profiles of samples from the same donors but with different levels of RNA quality. Although the proportion of variation associated to the RNA Integrity Number was mild (2.1%), the significant impact of RNA quality on the expression of individual genes was observed. CONCLUSIONS: By characterizing the major sources of variation in blood gene expression profiles, such variability can be minimized by modifications to study designs. Increasing sample size, balancing confounding factors between study groups, using rigorous selection criteria for sample quality, and well controlled experimental processes will significantly improve the accuracy and reproducibility of blood transcriptome study