We generated chimeric mice with livers that were predominantly repopulated with human hepatocytes. Hepatocytes were isolated from the chimeric mouse livers and their gene expressions were compared with hepatocytes isolated from normal human livers . Cluster and principal components analyses showed that gene expression profiles of hepatocytes from the chimeric mice and those from normal human livers were extremely closed.
Additionally, we performed microarray experiments to examine gene expression in human tissues. This data was used for comparison with hepatocytes.
A total of 22 tissues (bone marrow, cerebellum, colon, cortex, fetal brain, heart, kidney, liver, lung, pancreas, prostate, salivary gland, skeletal muscle, small intestine, spinal cord, spleen, stomach, testes, thymus, thyroid, trachea and uterus) were examined.
Overall design: The chimeric mice were generated by transplantation of 2 different donor hepatocytes. Hepatocytes were isolated from the mouse livers and normal human livers, and their cDNAs were used for microarray analysis.
Total RNA isolated from human tissues and cell cultures were labeled and hybridized to the GeneChip Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 Array according to the manufacturer's protocol.
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