Expression data from buccal and nasal epithelium of current and never smokers

Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer death, although only a small percentage of smokers develop the disease. Cigarette smoke exposure is known to cause a field of injury in cells throughout the respiratory tract, and while these airway epithelial cells are morphologically normal, they can undergo genetic alterations in response to cigarette smoke exposure. We used microarrays to analyze the gene expression of epithelial cells in the extrathoracic epithelium, specifically nasal and buccal epithelium, to see if these cells underwent similar genetic alterations in response to tobacco exposure as seen in bronchial epithelial cells as has been previously reported. Keywords: cross sectional Buccal and nasal epithelial cell samples were collected from healthy current and never smokers. RNA was isolated from these samples and hybridized to Affymetrix microarrays. Gene expression from never smokers was compared to never smoker gene expression from bronchial epithelium as well as expression data from other tissues to determine commonalities in expression patterns in normal extra- and intra-thoracic samples. In addition, gene expression from smokers and nonsmokers was compared in bronchial, nasal, and buccal epithelium to determine similarities in gene expression in these tissues in response to cigarette smoker exposure.