Expression profiles of the extracellular matrix-associated genes during rat liver regeneration

Abstract

It has been well known that the extracellular matrix (ECM) plays an important role in cell polarization, cell adhesion, cell proliferation, morphogenesis and differentiation. For the sake of the further in-depth investigation of the changes and actions of ECM in liver regeneration (LR) at gene transcriptional level, the ECM-associated genes were obtained by databases searching and literature retrieving, subsequently their expression profiles in rat regenerating liver were detected using Rat Genome 230 2.0 array, then LR-associated genes were identified based on comparison of the gene expression difference between sham operation (SO) group and partial hepatectomy (PH) group. A total of 97 genes were verified to be LR-associated. The initially and totally expressed number of these genes occurring in initial phase of LR, G0/G1 transition, cell proliferation, cell differentiation and structure-functional reconstruction were 49, 19, 43, 5 and 84, 51, 369, 144, respectively, illustrating that expression of the ECM-associated genes were initiated mainly in the early phase, working in differ-ent phases. Their expression similarity was classified into 5 groups including only up-, predominantly up-, only down-, predominantly down-, and equal in up-regulated and down-regulated, involving 38, 21, 21, 10 and 7 genes, respectively; the number of up-regulated expressed genes and down-regulated expressed ones was 411 and 186; their expression patterns were categorized into 24 types, showing that the physiological and biochemical activities in LR were characterized by phase, diversity and intricacy. According to expression profiles and expression patterns of the ECM-associated genes in LR, it was confirmed that the levels of the below-listed genes in expression increased at the corresponding phases of LR, including fibronectin-associated genes at early phase in LR, and collagen-associated genes at middle phase.