摘要
研究基因的组织特异性是了解生命活动进程和组织功能的重要一步.尽管对于看家基因和组织特异基因的研究由来已久,但是对于它们仍缺少统一的定义方式和检测方法.在定义方式上,可以从基因的组织表达数和在各组织间的表达变化情况来分别定义看家基因和组织特异基因.通常将在大多数正常组织中有表达,且表达水平较稳定的基因称为看家基因,而将在一个或少数组织中优势表达的基因定义为组织特异基因或组织选择基因.在检测方法上,高通量实验技术,包括基因芯片、RNA-seq和质谱技术等已成为检测基因组织特异性的主要方法.通过比较多个典型研究的实验结果,发现不同检测方法的覆盖度和灵敏度存在很大差异,其中RNA-seq技术最为灵敏,获得的看家基因数目最多,质谱技术检测出来的看家基因和组织特异基因数目较少,而基因芯片方法给出的多个检测结果间差别较大.尽管不同的定义方式和检测方法所导致的看家基因(或组织特异基因)的集合不完全一致,但不同的看家基因数据集(或组织特异基因)却展现出非常一致的功能和特性.看家基因通常实现所有组织和细胞都必须的基本功能,而看家基因与其他组织表达基因间的相互作用以及组织特异基因间的相互作用则实现了组织的特有功能.同时,基因的组织特异性与疾病之间具有密切联系,相比其他基因,看家基因更有可能成为癌基因,而组织特异基因则更有希望发展成为药物靶标.
Investigating gene tissue specificity is an important step to understand life process and tissue functions. Despite the long history of research about housekeeping genes and tissue specific genes, their definition and detection methods are various. Housekeeping genes and tissue specific genes can be defined from the aspect of tissue expression number and expression variation across tissues, respectively. In general, housekeeping genes are usually defined as those expressed in most tissues with stable expression levels, while tissue specific or tissue selective genes are defined as those predominantly expressed in one tissue or a few tissues. High-throughput technology, such as microarray, RNA-seq and mass spectrometry have become the main methods to detect the tissue specificity of genes. By comparing the experimental results of some typical researches, we found there are significant differences between different methods in their coverage and sensitivity. In these methods, RNA-seq was the most sensitive, which can detect the most number of housekeeping genes, while mass spectrometry can only detect less tissue specific genes, and the results from different microarray experiments were various. Despite different definition and technology can lead to different housekeeping and tissue specific gene datasets, these datasets have very consistent functions and characters. Housekeeping genes usually implement fundamental functions of tissues or cells, while tissue specific genes perform most specific functions of tissues. Meanwhile, the tissue specificity of genes has close relations with diseases. Compared to other genes, housekeeping genes tend to become cancer genes, while tissue specific genes are more like to become drug targets.
出处
《生物化学与生物物理进展》
SCIE
CAS
CSCD
北大核心
2016年第1期5-13,共9页
Progress In Biochemistry and Biophysics
基金
国防科学技术大学科研计划项目(JC15-03-01)
国际合作项目(2014DFB30010)
国家自然科学基金(31171266)资助~~
关键词
看家基因
组织特异性
疾病
housekeeping gene, tissue specific, disease
