Gene expression differences in pancreas and brain between diabetes-prone BB/OK rats and their diabetes protected congenic BB.6S derivatives

Aims and background: Congenic BB.6S rats are characterized by a drastically reduction of diabetes frequency by 94% compared with their parental BB/OK rat strain. To increase the chance of identification of the appropriate protective gene(s), the expression of 31,000 genes in pancreas and brain of BB/OK and BB.6S rats was studied using GeneChip microarray analysis. Material and methods: For the hybridization of Affymetrix GeneChips we use pooled samples of 20 individual rats (BB/OK 10M: 10F; BB.6S 10M: 10F) with an age of 8 days following the protocol described in the Affymetrix GeneChip Expression Analysis Techn…