Abstract
A procedure is described to discover genes that are specifically expressed
in human prostate. The procedure involves searching the expressed
sequence tag (EST) database for genes that have many related EST
sequences from human prostate cDNA libraries but none or few from
nonprostate human libraries. The selected candidate EST clones were
tested by RNA dot blots to examine tissue specificity and by Northern
blots to examine the transcript size of the corresponding mRNA. The
computer analysis identified 15 promising genes that were previously
unidentified. When seven of these were examined in an RNA hybridization
experiment, three were found to be prostate specific. The genes identified
could be useful in the targeted therapy of prostate cancer. The procedure
can easily be applied to discover genes specifically expressed in
other organs or tumors.
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