Common Features Identification of Differently Expressed Genes Related to Endemic Osteoarthritis Disease

Kashin-Beck disease (KBD) is a chronic, endemic osteochondropathy in China. cDNA microarray techniques were used to select the differentially expressed genes between the healthy and KBD patients. 227 differently expressed genes were used to identify common characteristics. By using GeneMerge anaysis, the common functions of these genes were identified and some of which are related to metal ion binding, such as magnesium ion binding and zinc ion binding. The upstream sequences of these genes were also downloaded from genomic databases and a sequence dataset was constructed. A distance tree was then achieved according to sequences similarity comparing. Finally, 7 gene clusters, each of which contained 2~3 genes with similar function were obtained.