Expression data from intracranial arteries and intracranial aneurysms

Gene expression information is useful in prioritizing candidate genes in linkage intervals. The data can also identify pathways involved in the pathophysiology of disease. We used microarrays to identify which genes are expressed in either intracranial arteries (control) or in intracranial aneurysms (case), and can therefore contribute to the disease phenotypes. We used microarrays to identify the pathway membership of expressed genes and the overrepresentation of pathways with expressed genes in the known linkage intervals for intracranial aneurysms. Keywords: Characterization of expression in both diseased and non-diseased intracranial arteries. Intracranial vessels and intracranial aneurysms were obtained from cadavers and preserved in RNAlater. RNA was isolated in pools for aneurysms and some arteries, due to limited amounts of tissue and RNA, whereas intracranial artery RNA for 5 samples was obtained from single individuals.