O papel modulador do gene AIRE - capes

MANUSCRITOdown regulated in mTEC cells. Figure 3 shows the gene expression hierarchicalclustering of statistically significant (SAM program) microarray data of controland Aire-silenced mTEC cells. It was possible to evidentiate 212 differentiallyexpressed PTA genes, which 135 were induced in control mTECs andrepressed after Aire silencing.This gene data set was compared with GNF database allowing picturing thePGE featured by mTECs following the effect of Aire silencing. The PTA geneswere grouped in 17 body systems, which are represented in this mTEC cell line(Figure 4). It was possible to found that these 135 PTA genes are under controlof the Aire gene, since its silencing caused their repression.Nevertheless, still remained the question about if the genes, which featurePGE are connected in networks and what is the role of the Aire gene in theircontrol.Two widely used methods for microarray data analysis are the Cluster-and-Tree View (Eisen et al., 1989), which is based on a mathematical description ofsimilarity and the organization of gene expression data is realized by groupingtogether genes with similar patterns of expression (hierarchical clustering), andthe Significance Analysis of Microarray (SAM) (Tusher et al., 2001), which isbased on t test statistics specifically developed for high-throughput microarraydata.Although these methods are useful tools for the identification of differentiallyexpressed genes, they not permit the determination of interactions betweengenes.There are several computational solutions proposed in the literature to infergene networks; the approaches based on the mathematical formalism of the214