EXIT SEMINAR
Patrick Tan
B. Sc. (Computer Science, Honours), Simon Fraser University, 2010
DATE: November 16, 2012
11 am – 12 noon
LOCATION: BCCRC Lecture Theatre
675 West 10th Avenue
Gene expression analysis of human and rodent brains
Abstract:
Gene expression patterns in the human brain are complex and poorly understood. Variations in these patterns are reflected in part by the neuroanatomical divisions in the brain. Comprehensive studies of gene expression in the brain have been limited, partly due to the difficulties in obtaining and isolating samples from healthy adult human brains. Moreover, detailed comparisons of these patterns across species are lacking.
Towards this end, I have applied principal components analysis (PCA) to analyse the major source of variation in the regional transcriptome of two adult human brains. These profiles were obtained from the publicly available Allen Human Brain Microarray datasets which consist of expression levels from ~20,000 genes profiled across ~300 brain region samples. Next, I compared these gene expression patterns with their orthologs in the adult mouse brain.
My results show that a large proportion of the expression pattern in human is attributable to cell type differences. Neuron markers are expressed in an anti-correlated manner from oligodendrocyte markers. This might reflect variations in neuron-oligodendrocyte cell populations across the brain. However, we cannot formally assess this hypothesis due to the lack of precise measurements of cell type populations and single cell expression levels across the brain. In comparison to mouse, my analyses show both gene expression similarities and differences across matched brain regions. In summary, my work highlights potential cell type marker genes and genes of interest with respect to the functional divergence between human and rodent brains.
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