Comprehensive and computational analysis of genes in human umbilical vein endothelial cells responsive to X-irradiation

Radiation exposure such as A-bomb or radiation therapy is considered a major health-risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In order to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the inflammatory reaction frequently encountered in the vascular system after exposure to ionizing radiation, we carried out a global scale microarray and computational gene expression analyses on human umbilical endothelial cells (HUVECs) exposed to X-ray (2.5 Gy). The gene ontology analysis revealed that the down-regulated genes were associated with cell cycle regulation, whereas the up-regulated genes were associated with inflammatory responses, in particular, the type 1 interferon response. The computational analysis using ingenuity pathway analysis also identified a gene network containing the interferon response factor 7 (IRF7) and its transcriptional targets such as interferon-induced transcripts (IFITs) and Mx1, which have been known to be associated with inflammation in endothelial cells. The up-regulated genes and the gene network identified here may explain the inflammatory response induced by X-irradiation. These findings uncover part of the molecular basis of the mechanism(s) of the inflammatory disorder in response to X-irradiation in HUVECs. The dataset is publicly available at the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) repository (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) with accession number GSE76484.