Effects of cigarette smoke on the human airway epithelial cell transcriptome

A number of studies have shown that cigarette smoking produces a field defect, such that genetic mutations induced by smoking occur throughout the lung and its intra and extra-pulmonary airways. Based on this concept, we have begun this study, which has as its goal the definition of the normal airway transcriptome, an analysis of how that transcriptome is affected by cigarette smoke, and to explore the reversibility of altered gene expression when smoking has been discontinued. We have obtained brushings from intra-pulmonary airways (the right upper lobe carina) and scrapings from the buccal mucosa, from normal smoking and non-smoking volunteers (including 34 Current Smokers, 23 Never Smokers and 18 Former Smokers). RNA was isolated from these samples and gene expression profiles from intra-pulmonary airway epithelial cells were analyzed using Affymetrix U133A human gene expression arrays. All microarray data from the experiments described above have been stored, preprocessed and analyzed in a relational MySQL database that is accessible through our website at http://pulm.bumc.bu.edu/aged

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Spira A, Beane J, Shah V, Liu G, Schembri F, Yang X, Palma J, Brody JS