Expression profiles from kidneys of rats treated with nephrotoxicants and with controls

The substances were administrated daily for 1, 5 or 28 days at doses that are expected to induce kidney-specific histopathological and clinical chemistry changes not before 28 days of repetitive dosing. At the end of treatment, kidneys from the treated animals were removed; the RNA from these kidneys, and from kidneys of several naive animals was extracted and subjected to microarray expression analysis. Twenty candidate genes which showed significant changes from control were identified using microarray experiments.受试物质每日给药，给药周期分别为1天、5天或28天，所用剂量预计仅在重复给药28天后，才会诱发肾脏特异性的组织病理学与临床生化改变。给药结束后，摘取给药组动物的肾脏；提取该批肾脏及多只未接触受试物的正常动物肾脏的RNA，进行基因芯片（microarray）表达谱分析。通过基因芯片实验，共筛选得到20个与对照组相比表达量存在显著差异的候选基因。