The Genes Tell the Story

British Columbia Cancer Research Centre recently published its findings about the effects of smoking on expressed genes in Human bronchial epithelial cells. Researchers analysed tissue
samples from 24 current and former smokers as well as from individuals who have never smoked. Using serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), they created libraries to identify patterns
of gene activity and discovered that some of the changes to gene expression due to smoking are reversible, while others are not.

SAGE tags are short 10-17 bp sequences. In their study, out of 231,866 unique tags, 27,000 tags did not map to known genes. The researchers identified a number of genes, previously not
associated with smoking. These were switched on in active smokers. An example is CABYR, a gene involved in helping sperm swim and which is also associated with brain tumours. The
team further investigated changes in genes involved in airway repair and regeneration. Within these, they found a gene that was partially reversible (MUC5AC, a mucin gene). These
findings were tested against a second cohort of current and former smokers and non-smokers.

SynaHybridise™ can be used to find possible variants of the gene that could match to a SAGE tag for MUC5AC.

To analyse the isoforms of this gene, please follow the instructions below:

1. Click HERE and submit query.
2. Click on the result FASTA headers to retrieve the sequence information from NCBI.