Detection of chromosomal regions showing differential gene expression in human skeletal muscle and in alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma

Background: Rhabdomyosarcoma is a relatively common tumour of the soft tissue, probably due to regulatory disruption of growth and differentiation of skeletal muscle stem cells. Identification of genes differentially expressed in normal skeletal muscle and in rhabdomyosarcoma may help in understanding mechanisms of tumour development, in discovering diagnostic and prognostic markers and in identifying novel targets for drug therapy. Results: A Perl-code web client was developed to automatically obtain genome map positions of large sets of genes. The software, based on automatic search on Human Genome Browser by sequence alignment, only requires availability of a single transcribed sequence for each gene. In this way, we obtained tissue-specific chromosomal maps of genes expressed in rhabdomyosarcoma or skeletal muscle. Subsequently, Perl software was developed to calculate gene density along chromosomes, by using a sliding window. Thirty-three chromosomal regions harbouring genes most...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2004
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Andrea Bisognin, Stefania Bortoluzzi, Gian Antonio Danieli
• Keywords: BMCBI 2004, Rhabdomyosarcoma, Skeletal Muscle, Skeletal Muscle Stem