Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Singapore

Mechanobiology of Disease

Poster Abstracts

70-POS Board 70 Mining Genome Expression Omnibus (GEO) Datasets for Analysis of TRP Channels in Glioma Cell Lines

Taylor M. Nunn, Taylor W. Uselman, Elba E. Serrano . New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA.

Gliomas are aggressive primary brain tumors that develop from glial cells and are characterized by a low survival prognosis. Recent literature points to a potential role for TRP channels in glioma proliferation and tumor progression. As a prelude to experiments exploring the role of mechanosensation in glioma cell culture systems, we aimed to determine the prevalence of TRP channels across multiple glioma cell lines using bioinformatics approaches. Our strategy benefited from the emergence of open source metadata repositories that facilitate experimental design which incorporates in silico inquiry as a complementary approach to in vitro and in vivo methodologies. Through literature review we identified a subset of 13 TRP channel genes as candidates for expression analysis in glioma cell lines (TRPA, 1; TRPC, 3; TRPV, 3; TRPM, 5; TRPP, 1). Genes were selected based on their reported role in mechanotransduction and/or evidence that they are involved in glioma brain tumor progression. We queried the GEO repository for glioma high throughput datasets and selected a GEO Dataset Record comprising GeneChip® Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 microarray data from 60 cancer cell lines for analysis (GDS4296). Evaluation of normalized expression values for the 13 exploratory TRP channels uncovered the highest expression for TRPC1, TRPM7, and TRPP2 in all six glioma cell lines included in the dataset. Future studies will use qPCR to confirm TRP channel expression in glioma cell lines as part of ongoing experiments that examine glioma proliferation in matrix environnments. We conclude that outcomes from analysis of cell line expression metadata can inform research that investigates the role of TRP channels in brain cancer. Supported by undergraduate research awards: NMSU Discovery Scholars (TMN); NIH R25NS080685 (TWU).

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