Sage transcript profiles in cultured human fetal fibroblasts, WI-38

Serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) allows us to analyze the profile of genes expressed in human lung fibroblast cell line WI-38. Manual sequenc ing of approximately 10,000 transcripts derived from WI-38 cells revealed 1 025 genes expression among of which 431 tags matched GenBank entries, where as 594 corresponded to novel previously undescribed transcripts. 7SL RNA (7 L7) 5'-truncated pseudogene and the gene with no match (tag: TCCCTAGCT) wer e found the most abundant among all the analyzed genes (10.2 and 4.6% respe ctively). The expression pattern of the genes coding for cytoskeletal prote ins, extracellular matrix components (ECM) and cytokines has been obtained. The results here demonstrate the unique gene expression pattern in human W I-38 fibroblast cell line and support a possibility of useful application o f SAGE method for differential expression analysis.