GENE EXPRESSION PROFILING OF CYTOKINE ACTIVATED T-CELLS

Understanding the regulatory mechanisms of immune cells is a major topic in immunol-ogy research today. With high throughput methods like cDNA microarray technology it is possible to collect large amount of data and to gain insights into cellular regulatory mechanisms. T-cells are the major producers of cytokines and they also possess the cor-responding cytokine receptors. Class 1 cytokine receptors share the chain which is a signal transducing subunit that activates the Janus kinase (JAK). Signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) molecules get phosphorylated and act inside the nucleus as transcription factors. The aim of this study was to perform gene expression studies of cytokine activated T-cells. Class 1 cytokine receptor activating cytokines like IL-2, IL-4, IL-7 and IL-15 were utilized to stimulate the T-cells. Isolated mRNA from unstimulated reference T-cells and from cytokine stimulated T-cells were used for DNA microarray analysis with cDNA slides that have 10.000 genes spotted. The obtained data, after scanning and raw data analysis, was imported in a database management system, where the data was filtered an