Gene expression profiles of p63 knockout mouse

p63 is essential for the self-renewal of stem cells of all stratified epithelial tissues, including mammary and prostate glands as well as all squamous epithelia. In p63 null embryos, stratified epithelial tissues are lost or eroded several days after stratification due to the loss of regenerative cell populations. Here we show that p63 null embryos rapidly develop intestine-like metaplasia with gene expression profiles similar to Barrett’s metaplasia in a proximal stomach region. Also, we found that deletion of p63 cells in bladder leads to an expansion of columnar epithelial cells along the basement membrane and their rapid transition to a metaplastic phenotype similar to Barrett’s esophagus. It is likely that bladder carcinogens recapitulate this entire metaplastic transition. Tissues including proximal stomach (PS), distal stomach (DS), small intestine (SI), large intestine (LI) and bladder (BL) were collected from p63 knockout (KO) and wild type (WT) mice. BL were collected on three time points (embryo (E) 15, 18 and 19). PS, DS, SI and LI were collected from E18 fetus. We used Affymetrix mouse 430 2.0 array chip to hybridize 2 samples from each of tissues (p63 knockout and wild types).