Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: Pterygium is a disease of the ocular surface, characterized by the overgrowth of the conjunctiva onto the clear cornea. Pterygium develops slowly, and the purpose of the study was to determine gene regulation underlying the tissue phenotype. Methods: Primary pterygia tissue was obtained from 29 patients undergoing pterygium excision with conjunctival autografting utilizing superior bulbar conjunctiva. Remnants of the repair conjunctiva and pterygia tissue were snap frozen for each patient. For the purpose of mRNA extraction, each type of tissue sample was pooled. Total RNA was processed for analysis by Incyte using the human UniGem V 2.33 array that contained 9,128 annotated genes or EST clusters. The results were analyzed by GemTools and Gene Spring software. Results: Eighty four genes were upregulated more than 2 fold in the pterygium tissue when compared with the control conjunctiva. The array passed all quality control checks and the sensitivity was 1 in 100,000. Upregulated genes were found in a number of major categories: Cell growth and maintenance (23), cell communication (27), cell adhesion (3), cyclins (3), translation initiation factors (2), signal transduction (19) oncogenes (3) and cancer-related (4). Collagen is major structural protein of pterygia tissue. Six collagen genes were upregulated, collagen type I, alpha 1 changed 2.4. Few changes in transcription were found for common growth factors or genes for apoptosis.Conclusions: DNA array provides important new avenues for investigation for mechanisms of pterygium development. In the present study, pooling may decrease sensitivity; however, accuracy is increased.
Keywords: 417 gene/expression • 532 Pterygium • 507 pathology: human