Gene expression in asbestos exposed lung cells

Asbestos has been shown to cause chromosomal damage and DNA aberrations. The fiber is associated with many different lung diseases such as asbestosis, malignant mesothelioma, and lung cancer, but the disease-related processes are still largely unknown. Our aim was to identify specific gene expression profiles by using Affymetrix arrays, in human cell lines A549, Beas-2B, and MeT5A exposed to asbestos in a time-dependent manner. The hybridization data was analyzed using an algorithm specifically designed for clustering short time series expression data, a canonical correlation analysis (CCA) for identifying correlations between the cell lines, and a Gene Ontology (GO) analysis method for the identification of enriched differentially expressed biological processes. Keywords: time course, gene expression, cell line, asbestos Samples from three cell lines were collected from asbestos exposed and non-exposed controls at 1h, 6h, 24h, 48h and 7days (not all time-points for each cell lines). Replicates were done for one exposed sample of each cell line.