Caskin2-induced changes in endothelial cell gene expression

Caskin2 is a previously uncharacterized gene encoding a predicted scaffolding protein that we have found is highly expressed in vascular endothelial cells. We used microarray to identify genes that are differentially expressed in the setting of Caskin2 overexpression to test the hypothesis that Caskin2 expression induces a quiescent gene expression profile in cultured endothelial cells. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were infected with adenovirus encoding human Caskin2 variant 1 or GFP (n=3 technical replicates per treatment group) and allowed to recover in growth medium. RNA was extracted and hybridized on Affymetrix human transcriptome microarrays. Robust multi-array (RMA) normalization was performed using the Partek Genomics Suite 6.5.