IgA nephropathy and mesangial cell proliferation: shared global gene expression profiles

Abstract

SUMMARY: It is well established that mesangial cell proliferation plays a major role in glomerular injury and progressive renal injury. the expression of a number of different genes has been reported in proliferative mesangial cells in culture. However, the relevance of these genes to renal injury in general and IgA nephropathy (IgAN) remains to be established. Assessment of gene activity on a global genome‐wide scale is a fundamental and newly developed molecular strategy to expand the scope of clinical investigation from a single gene to studying all genes at once in a systematic pattern. Capitalizing on the recently developed methodology of high cDNA array hybridization, the simultaneous expression of thousands of genes in primary human proliferating mesangial cells was monitored and compared with renal tissue of IgAN. Complex [α‐33P]‐labelled cDNA targets were prepared from cultured mesangial cells, remnant tissue from five IgAN renal biopsies and four nephrectomies (controls). Each target was hybridized to a high‐density array of 18 326 paired target genes. the radioactive hybridization signals were analysed by phosphorimager. Approximately 8212±530 different gene transcripts were detected per target. Close to 5% (386±90 genes) were full‐length mRNA human transcripts (HT) and the remainder were expressed sequence tags (EST). Using a relational database, electronic subtraction was performed and matching was carried out to allow identification of 203 HT with shared expression in proliferative mesangial cells and IgAN renal biopsies. In addition hierarchical clustering analysis was performed on the HT of IgAN and controls to establish differential expression profiles of mesangial HT in IgAN and controls. Collectively the presented data constitutes a preliminary renal bioinformatics database of the transcriptional profiles in IgAN. More importantly, the information may help to speed up the discovery of genes underlying human IgAN.