Expression data from cultivated Human Thymic Epithelial Cells (hTECs) in comparison with cultivated Human Epidermal derived Keratinocytes (hEKs)

The thymic epithelium and the epidermis display many common features despite their different structure, function and embryonic origin. We used microarrays to uncover differences and similarities in the gene expression profile of hTECs and hEKs in vitro and investigate their significance for thymic structure and function. Single-cell derived hTECs colonies with different colony morphology and single hEKs colonies were selected for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. Four biological replicates were selected for each condition.