Renal cortex expression differences between hypertensive and normotensive patients

Identification of renal cortex genes whose expression differs between male individuals with high blood pressure and normal blood pressure using Affymetrix GeneChip Human Gene 1.0 ST Arrays. The Silesian Renal Tissue Bank, a collection of tissue which aimed to investigate candidate genes in human cardiovascular disease, was used to analyze the gene expression in hypertensive and normotensive patients. Approximately 1 cm3 of tissue from the healthy (unaffected by cancer) pole of the kidney was obtained immediately after surgery and transferred into containers with RNAlater (Ambion) and preserved at 70°C before mRNA extraction, which used a commercially available assay (RNeasy, Qiagen). Medulla and cortex were separated and individual RNA was obtained for each of them. No pooling was performed. After extraction of RNA, cRNA was prepared and arrays performed using Affymetrix GeneChip Human Gene 1.0 ST Arrays performed at the Ramaciotti Gene Function Analysis facility, University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.