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cell lines vs tissue expression - (Jul/13/2009 )

HI,

I've got conflicting data on gene expression between cell lines and tumor tissues. Mygene of interest shows over expression in all my cell lines (8/9) and reduction in the one normal immortalised cell line. However, when I checked the expression in tumor tissues, I find that the gene is under expressed in 35% of cases and overexpressed in only 17%?

what the big difference? Shall I confirm by IHC staining?

Thanks

-SF_HK-

SF_HK on Jul 13 2009, 07:40 PM said:

HI,

I've got conflicting data on gene expression between cell lines and tumor tissues. Mygene of interest shows over expression in all my cell lines (8/9) and reduction in the one normal immortalised cell line. However, when I checked the expression in tumor tissues, I find that the gene is under expressed in 35% of cases and overexpressed in only 17%?

what the big difference? Shall I confirm by IHC staining?

Thanks

This is not infrequent! That is why data generated on cell lines is not as reliable (and publishable) as that on primary tumor tissues.

If you have good IHC grade human Ab, You should definitely confirm by IHC, just in case if the gene is still important at a protein level or if your real-time PCR is not working well in RNA isolated from tumor tissues.

-cellcounter-