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Discovery of candidate novel molecular regulators of interstitial cells of Cajal using a simple
Excel-based macro and associated bioinformatics pipeline.
Introduction: Interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC) play an important role in gut motility and
cancer development, however, relatively little is known of the molecular mechanisms that
drive these processes. To identify novel candidate molecular regulators of ICC biology we
developed and applied a novel bioinformatic tool to analyse ICC datasets within the Gene
Expression Omnibus (GEO) repository.
Materials and Methods: An Excel-based macro was developed that sorts user-downloaded
GEO data, containing gene identifiers and associated expression values, to produce a list of
genes ranked from highest to lowest expression across multiple samples. To discover novel
candidate ICC biology we used the macro, together with a range of other bioinformatic tools,
to analyse the GEO ICC dataset, GSE7809.
Results: Bioinformatic analysis of gene lists generated via the macro predicts EGR, ETS, and
ATF transcription factor families as novel regulators of ICC gene expression (Figure 1).
These results have significant implications for the control of ICC behaviour in normal and
disease states.
Figure 1: Promoter analysis performed on gene lists produced from the Excel-based macro
predicts regulation of ICC gene expression by EGR, ETS and ATF transcription factor
families.