Gene expression profile of normal lungs predicts genetic predisposition to lung cancer in mice

Abstract

Genetic susceptibility to lung tumorigenesis shows large variations among mouse strains. To test whether genetic predisposition to lung tumorigenesis is associated with a specific gene expression profile in normal lungs, we analyzed gene expression in 16 inbred strains of known susceptibility/resistance to lung tumorigenesis, using the RIKEN mouse full-length cDNA 19K microarray set. The strain-specific expression profile of 91 cDNA clones correlated with strain lung tumor susceptibility/resistance and predicted, by principal component analysis, the genetic predisposition to lung tumorigenesis in mice.