Microarray Analysis of Gene Expression by Ginseng Water Extracts in a Mouse Adrenal Cortex after Immobilization Stress

Abstract

To investigate the effects of repeated immobilization-stress challenge on the the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the genomic transcriptome in the adrenal cortex of immobilization-stressed mouse was analyzed by using a cDNA microarray. Mice were subjected to immobilization stress for 2 h per day for 5 consecutive d. With a 4.0-fold cutoff of arbitrary criteria, the expression levels of 168 out of 41,174 genes were significantly modulated in the adrenal cortex by stress when comparing the control and experimental groups. These genes were related to apoptosis, cell cycle, immune response, inflammatory responses, and signal transduction, and thus may be used as potential targets for the development of therapeutics for chronic stress or depression. Six significant genes among these were selected for real time polymerase chain reaction analysis to confirm the change of their expression levels. The gene for phospho 1 was also further investigated because its expression showed the greatest fold-change.