%0 Journal Article
%T Variation in tissue-specific gene expression among natural populations
%A Andrew Whitehead
%A Douglas L Crawford
%J Genome Biology
%D 2005
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/gb-2005-6-2-r13
%X Half of the genes (48%) were differentially expressed among individuals within a population-tissue group and 76% were differentially expressed among tissues. Differences among tissues reflected well established tissue-specific metabolic requirements, suggesting that these measures of gene expression accurately reflect changes in proteins and their phenotypic effects. Remarkably, only a small subset (31%) of tissue-specific differences was consistent in all three populations.These data indicate that many tissue-specific differences in gene expression are unique to one population and thus are unlikely to contribute to fundamental differences between tissue types. We suggest that those subsets of treatment-specific gene expression patterns that are conserved between taxa are most likely to be functionally related to the physiological state in question.The regulation of gene expression varies extensively among tissues, individuals, strains, populations and species [1-6] and variation in gene expression has a genetic basis [7,8]. Despite such biological variance, differences in gene expression are used to describe cancers [9-12], heart failure [13,14] and metabolic diseases [15]. It is common for these pathologies to be associated with changes in tissue-specific gene expression or changes in metabolic gene expression. For example, many different cancers have unique tissue-specific patterns of gene expression [16], and thyroid cancers are associated with increases in aerobic metabolic gene expression [17].Although tissue-specific gene expression patterns are often used as a method to identify functionally relevant genes, how conserved these differences are among outbred individuals and among populations has not been well documented. It is possible that many of these changes represent polymorphism among individuals or populations and are not specifically associated with disease. To address this we used a well established system (tissue-specific gene expression) and genes w
%U http://genomebiology.com/2005/6/2/R13