Characterization of a newly developed chicken 44K Agilent microarray

• Published in: BMC genomics Vol. 9; no. 60; p. 60
• Main Authors: Li, Xianyao, Chiang, Hsin-I, Zhu, James, Dowd, Scot E, Zhou, Huaijun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 31.01.2008; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Agilent inkjet technology; Analysis; animal genetics; Animals; Base Sequence; Chickens; Chickens - genetics; Chickens - virology; DNA microarrays; DNA Primers - genetics; Evaluation; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling - methods; Gene Expression Profiling - statistics & numerical data; genes; Genetic aspects; Genome; Genome, Viral; ileum; Ileum - metabolism; Influenza A virus - genetics; Influenza A Virus, H5N2 Subtype - genetics; Influenza A Virus, H5N2 Subtype - isolation & purification; liver; Liver - metabolism; Mardivirus - genetics; microarray technology; MicroRNAs - genetics; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis - methods; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis - statistics & numerical data; oligonucleotides; Organ Specificity; Palatine Tonsil - metabolism; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; Sensitivity and Specificity; spleen; Spleen - metabolism; tonsils
• DOI: 10.1186/1471-2164-9-60
• ISSN: 1471-2164

Background: The development of microarray technology has greatly enhanced our ability to evaluate gene expression. In theory, the expression of all genes in a given organism can be monitored simultaneously. Sequencing of the chicken genome has provided the crucial information for the design of a comprehensive chicken transcriptome microarray. A long oligonucleotide microarray has been manually curated and designed by our group and manufactured using Agilent inkjet technology. This provides a flexible and powerful platform with high sensitivity and specificity for gene expression studies. Results: A chicken 60-mer oligonucleotide microarray consisting of 42,034 features including the entire Marek's disease virus, two avian influenza virus (H5N2 and H5N3), and 150 chicken microRNAs has been designed and tested. In an important validation study, total RNA isolated from four major chicken tissues: cecal tonsil (C), ileum (I), liver (L), and spleen (S) were used for comparative hybridizations. More than 95% of spots had high signal noise ratio (SNR > 10). There were 2886, 2660, 358, 3208, 3355, and 3710 genes differentially expressed between liver and spleen, spleen and cecal tonsil, cecal tonsil and ileum, liver and cecal tonsil, liver and ileum, spleen and ileum (P < 10-7), respectively. There were a number of tissue-selective genes for cecal tonsil, ileum, liver, and spleen identified (95, 71, 535, and 108, respectively; P < 10-7). Another highlight of these data revealed that the antimicrobial peptides GAL1, GAL2, GAL6 and GAL7 were highly expressed in the spleen compared to other tissues tested. Conclusion: A chicken 60-mer oligonucleotide 44K microarray was designed and validated in a comprehensive survey of gene expression in diverse tissues. The results of these tissue expression analyses have demonstrated that this microarray has high specificity and sensitivity, and will be a useful tool for chicken functional genomics. Novel data on the expression of putative tissue specific genes and antimicrobial peptides is highlighted as part of this comprehensive microarray validation study. The information for accessing and ordering this 44K chicken array can be found at http:// people.tamu.edu/~hjzhou/TAMUAgilent44KArray/.