Megakaryocytes are large hematopoietic cells present in the bone marrow cavity, comprising less than 0.1% of all bone marrow cells. Despite their small number, megakaryocytes play important roles in blood coagulation, inflammatory responses, and platelet production. However, little is known about changes in gene expression during megakaryocyte maturation. Here we identified the genes whose expression was changed during K562 leukemia cell differentiation into megakaryocytes using an Affymetrix GeneChip microarray to determine the multifunctionality of megakaryocytes. K562 cells were differentiated into mature megakaryocytes by treatment for 7 days with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate, and a microarray was performed using RNA obtained from both types of cells. The expression of 44,629 genes was compared between K562 cells and mature megakaryocytes, and 954 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were selected based on a p-value < 0.05 and a fold change >2. The DEGs was further functionally classified using five major megakaryocyte function-associated clusters—inflammatory response, angiogenesis, cell migration, extracellular matrix, and secretion. Furthermore, interaction analysis based on the STRING database was used to generate interactions between the proteins translated from the DEGs. This study provides information on the bioinformatics of the DEGs in mature megakaryocytes after K562 cell differentiation.
Keywords: STRING; differentially expressed genes; megakaryocytes; microarray data.