Expression analysis of members of the neuronal calcium sensor protein family: combining bioinformatics and Western blot analysis.

We have used in silico mining of public databases (NCBI UniGene and NCI SAGE Anatomic Viewer) as a tool to obtain the tissue distribution pattern of three members of the neuronal calcium sensor protein family, namely VILIP-1, hippocalcin, and NCS-1 in humans. The theoretical human mRNA expression profile of the calcium sensor proteins derived from expressed sequence tag (EST) and serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) data was compared with expression data from human tissues obtained by Western blot analysis. Since the EST databank searches do not yet give comparable results for rat which is often used as model animal, we have also analyzed the protein expression in rat tissues. Similar to the human expression profile in rat tissues calcium sensor proteins are mainly detected in the nervous system, but the data consistently implicated the additional expression in peripheral tissues with remarkable differences between the calcium sensor proteins. Copyright 2004 Elsevier Inc.