Author contributions: Xu X carried out most of the experiments and participated in drafting the manuscript; Lu XH and Cheng SJ were leaders of the project, who conceived, initiated, and designed the study; Feng L contributed to the design of all experiments and revised the manuscript; Wu X, Yao F, Lu XH, Ma YC and Fei GJ collected all the patient samples and contributed to the design of the experiments; Fei GJ and Xu X collected patient clinical data; An N and Xu X contributed to the RNA preparation; Feng L performed array hybridization with assistance from Xu X and An N; Xu X participated in the bioinformatics analyses with the guidance of Feng L and Liu Y; Xu X performed the real time qPCR and immunohistochemical staining experiments and statistical analysis with assistance from Feng L and Liu Y; Zhou WX and Li Y carried out most of the pathological diagnosis and immunohistochemical evaluation; Lu XH and Cheng SJ supervised the project; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
METHODS:Gastric specimens from an upper magnifying chromoendoscopic targeted biopsy were collected from March 2010 to May 2013. Whole genome expression profiling was performed on 19 low-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (LGIN), 20 high-grade intraepithelial neoplasia (HGIN), 19 early-stage adenocarcinoma (EGC), and 19 chronic gastritis tissue samples using Agilent 4 × 44K Whole Human Genome microarrays. Differentially expressed genes between different types of lesions were identified using an unpaired t -test and corrected with the Benjamini and Hochberg false discovery rate algorithm. A gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis was performed using the GeneSpring software GX 12.6. The differentially expressed gene was verified using a real-time TaqMan ® PCR assay with independent tissue samples, including 26 LGIN, 15 HGIN, 14 EGC, and 20 chronic gastritis. The expression of G0S2 were further validated by immunohistochemical staining (IHC) in 24 LGIN, 40 HGIN, 30 EGC and 61 chronic gastritis specimens.
RESULTS:The gene expression patterns of LGIN and HGIN tissues were distinct. There were 2521 significantly differentially expressed transcripts in HGIN, with 951 upregulated and 1570 downregulated. A GO enrichment analysis demonstrated that the most striking overexpressed transcripts in HGIN compared with LGIN were in the category of metabolism, defense response, and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) cascade. While the vast majority of transcripts had barely altered expression in HGIN and EGC tissues, only 38 transcripts were upregulated in EGC. A GO enrichment analysis revealed that the alterations of the immune response were most prominent in the progression from HGIN to EGC. were expressed at higher levels both in HGIN and EGC. A characteristic gene, G0/G1 switch 2 (G0S2) was one of the 289 transcripts and related to metabolism, the immune response, and the NF-κB cascade, and its expression was validated in independent samples through real-time TaqMan ® PCR and immunohistochemical staining. In real-time PCR analysis, the expression of G0S...