O papel modulador do gene AIRE - capes

ontogeny using such technology has been the subject of extensive studies [6-8,11,20-22].Nevertheless, current understanding regarding the molecular pathways ofthymocyte maturation is still considered as fragmented and the results oftenremain difficult to situate in an integrated and dynamic view of T celldifferentiation [6].Recently a high-throughput data set containing thousands of gene expressionvalues during murine thymus ontogeny, including nonmanipulated and knockoutstrains, was generated by cDNA microarray technology and analyzed by SAMor hierarchical clustering programs [6-8,11], which permitted the monitoring ofnumerous differentially expressed genes simultaneously.The differentially expressed genes identified by SAM statistics and groupedby hierarchical clustering provided a valuable data set for new insights into howthese genes could interact with each other.In this study, the interactive relationships of constructing networks amongthese differentially expressed genes of thymus development observed duringthe gestational period of (Balb-c x C57Bl/6) F 1 hybrid mice were evaluated.Hybridization data from nylon cDNA microarrays containing a total of 1,576thymus IMAGE sequences were analyzed using the GeneNetwork 1.2 software[12], whose results showed that each phase of thymus development exhibited acharacteristic interaction between genes, permitting the identification ofimportant genetic nodes, i.e., genes that exert an inductive/repressive effect onother genes or contrary to this, are the targets of several other genes.239