The Quantitative Gene Expression core will measure changes in expression of large numbers of genes in human and cell culture samples obtained in the course of experiments proposed in each of the three projects of this Program Project. The Core will be directed by Greg Dolganov, a faculty member recently recruited to UCSF who has spent several years developing and validating methods to measure simultaneously the expression levels of hundreds of genes over a wide range of copy numbers in small biologic samples. The Core will be staffed by a research associate who will be trained to utilize conventional real time PCR (TaqMan) as well as a novel variation on this approach, developed by this Core Director. This Core will provide centralized equipment and personnel resources to obviate the needs to train additional personnel in each lab and to duplicate expensive equipment. In addition, the Core will provide rigorous and standardized methods for measuring gene expression in the airway cells of common interest to all project investigators. For the small samples of airway epithelial cells obtained by nasal scraping and bronchial brushing of human subjects, the analysis will be performed after the pre-amplification with a mixture of gene-specific primers. With this approach, we will be able to rapidly analyze the expression levels of a relatively large numbers of genes from multiple samples. This Core will collaborate closely with project 3 in developing primers for novel genes identified through gene array studies of infected epithelial cells and will analyze epithelial cells and will analyze epithelial cell samples from Projects 1 and 2 for expression of there novel genes as well.
