Genome-wide expression profiling after Valproic acid treatment in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Valproic acid (VA) is a small-chain branched fatty acid, widely used as anticonvulsant, and mood stabilizer to treat psychiatric illness. Valproic acid is also known to inhibit the histone deacetylases (HDACs), which makes it as a potent antitumor agent in alone or in combination with other cytotoxic drugs. Beside its conventional activities, valproic acid reported to have much broader, complicated effects and affect many complex physiological processes. However the molecular mechanisms of valproic acid are unclear. So, we used budding yeast transcriptome analysis to better understand the molecular mechanism of action of valproic acid. The clusters of differentially expressed genes in microarray after VA (6mM) treatment and their functional enrichment analysis revealed its overall effects on various biological processes such as cell cycle, signal transduction, metabolism, transcription, ubiquitination, transporter activities and many more. The microarray data were validated by quantitative real-time PCR. Wild-type yeast (W1588-4c) cells were grown to exponential phase and the cells were left untreated (Control) or treated with a dose of 6mM Valproic acid (VA) for 3h. Two independent experiments were performed for each experiment (Control or VA). Total RNAs were extracted and hybridized on Affymetrix microarrays.