Dmytrenko V. Association of transcriptional activity of the genes with the initiation and progression of human brain glial tumors

The object is the molecular mechanisms of the initiation and progression of brain glial tumors; the aim is the identification and characterization of the genes, whose expression changes may be associated with the initiation and progression of human brain glial tumors; the methods of molecular biology and biochemistry were applied; the novelty lies in the identification of 129 genes with substantially changed expression level in astrocytic tumors and this can be a basis for molecular characteristic of brain glial tumors; differential expression of several genes was revealed firstly; not described previously accumulation of the heterogeneous Alu-containing nucleotide sequences was revealed in glial tumors; generalized inactivation of mitochondrial genome was revealed firstly in glioblastoma, the most malignant form of the glioma; substantial decrease of the expression of potential tumor suppressor gene TSC-22 at the mRNA and protein level was detected firstly in brain tumors; new tumor-specific transcript and protein HC gp-39 of larger size was shown preferentiall in most malignant astrocytomas; the results include the identification and characterization of the peculiarities of gene expression changes, associated with definite propertis of tumor cells of astrocytic tumors by using of SAGE and differential hybridization of cDNA libraries; the determination of the correlation between the increase of gene quantity, whose expression is changed in tumors, and increase of astrocytoma malignancy grade; determination of the gene groups, whose changed transcription activity are characteristic for definite astrocytoma grades.