Identification of Appropriate Housekeeping Genes for Gene Expression Analysis in Long-term Hypoxia-treated Kidney Cells.

BACKGROUND: Selection of stably expressing housekeeping genes (HKGs) is a crucial step in gene expression analysis. However, there are no universal HKGs for all experiments, and they should be determined by each biologic condition. The aim of this study was to detect appropriate HKGs for kidney cells cultured in long-term hypoxia.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Based on a screening step using a microarray data available from gene expression omnibus database, a set of candidate HKGs were chosen to be assessed in human kidney cells cultured in hypoxic or normoxic conditions for about 2 weeks in a time course manner. The stability of gene expression was assessed by refFinder, a web-based tool that integrates four computational programs (geNorm, Normfinder, BestKeeper, and the comparative ΔΔCt method).

RESULTS: GAPDH and ACTB were the most stable genes in hypoxia treated cells whereas, B2M and ACTB were the best HKGs in cells cultured in normoxia. When both hypoxia and normoxia treated cells from all time points were evaluated together, GAPDH and ACTB equally showed the most stability.

CONCLUSION: As in relative quantification of real-time polymerase chain reaction data, the same HKGs should be selected for all groups, we believe that GAPDH and ACTB are suitable HKGs for studies on the effect of hypoxia on cultured kidney cells.