Transcriptome Analysis of Adrenocortical Cells in Health and Disease

The transcriptome is the complete set of transcripts in a specific type of cell or tissue. Generally, the goal of transcriptome analysis is to identify genes differentially expressed among different conditions, leading to a new understanding of the genes or pathways associated with the conditions. Transcriptome analysis requires an appropriate statistical method with a multiple comparison test to interpret global changes in the expression of thousands of genes. This chapter overviews and describes recent progress in the transcriptome analysis of adrenocortical cells. Strategies for determining transcriptomes and data processing to interpret analysis have been discussed. Representative studies have been introduced: an adrenocortical cell line with small interference RNA-knockdown experiment revealed steroidogenic factor-1 functions as a “regulone” that orchestrate tissue-specific steroidogenic regulation and housekeeping metabolic regulation and a mouse model for human lipoid congenital adrenal hyperplasia indicated a reciprocal interaction between steroidogenic cells and adjacent macrophages both fulfilled with cholesterol ester droplets. Analysis of global transcript profiling will be an essential tool for future research on the nature of adrenocortical cells.