Transcriptomic profiling of primary alveolar epithelial cell differentiation in human and rat

Cell-type specific gene regulation is a key to gaining a full understanding of how the distinct phenotypes of differentiated cells are achieved and maintained. Here we examined how changes in transcriptional activation during alveolar epithelial cell (AEC) differentiation determine phenotype. We performed transcriptomic profiling using in vitro differentiation of human and rat primary AEC. This model recapitulates in vitro an in vivo process in which AEC transition from alveolar type 2 (AT2) cells to alveolar type 1 (AT1) cells during normal maintenance and regeneration following lung injury. Here we describe in detail the quality control, preprocessing, and normalization of microarray data presented within the associated study (Marconett et al., 2013). We also include R code for reproducibility of the referenced data and easily accessible processed data tables.