Hereditary profiles of disorderly transcription?

Microscopic examination of living cells often reveals that cells from some cell strains appear to be in a permanent state of disarray without obvious reason. In all probability such a disorderly state affects cell functioning. The aim of this study was to establish whether a disorderly state could occur that adversely affects gene expression profiles and whether such a state might have biomedical consequences. To this end, the expression profiles of the 14 genes of the proteasome derived from the GEO SAGE database were utilized as a model system.

By adopting the overall expression profile as the standard for normal expression, deviation in transcription was frequently observed. Each deviating tissue exhibited its own characteristic profile of over-expressed and under-expressed genes. Moreover such a specific deviating profile appeared to be epigenetic in origin and could be stably transmitted to a clonal derivative e.g. from a precancerous normal tissue to its tumor. A significantly greater degree of deviation was observed in the expression profiles from the tumor tissues. The changes in the expression of different genes display a network of interdependencies. Therefore our hypothesis is that deviating profiles reflect disorder in the localization of genes within the nucleus. The underlying cause(s) for these disorderly states remain obscure; it could be noise and/or deterministic chaos. Presence of mutational damage does not appear to be predominantly involved.

As disturbances in expression profiles frequently occur and have biomedical consequences, its determination could prove of value in several fields of biomedical research.