Gene expression data from transgenic and knockout mice

Activation of oncogenic ras pathway accounts for up to 90% low-grade superficial urothelial carcinomas of bladder, and p53 deficiency is very common in high-grade muscle invasive carcinomas. These two pathways in bladder urothelial tumorigenesis used to be considered divergent and their potential collaboration has not been illustrated. We did laser capture micro-dissection (LCM) to separate the tumor cells from the whole bladder tissues from H-ras transgenic and p53 knockout mice, as well as normal urothelial cells as control. Microarray was then performed to identify distinct classes of up-regulated genes during tumorigenesis and progression. In order to get the gene expression profiles of carcinoma in situ (CIS), muscle invasive tumors and normal cells, we used LCM to purify the cells from mixture of different types of cells, and then extracted RNA for microarray. There are three groups applied in microarray, which are normal cells as control, CIS (tumor genesis) and invasive tumors (tumor progression).