The Gene Expression Profile in Aircrew Members of Civil Aviation

In the aviation environment many factors can affect the health of aircrew members. It can be observed by high-throughput gene chip technology that how environmental factors affect the genes expression. Our objective is to observe whether atmosphere cosmic radiation can affect gene expression in aircrew and its rules. The health aircrew members and control persons were grouped into 6 groups respectively as sex and flying length service or ages. Total RNA of vein lymphocytes was extracted. Twelve Affymetrix U133 plus 2.0.gene chip was used. The results was: I There were 624 differentially expressed genes(Ples0.05) resulting in from flying alone. Among these genes, there were 145 genes up-regulated ges1.5-fold or down-regulated les0.67-fold. II The 145 genes was clustered in term of molecular functions. Results showed these genes are involved in apoptosis, cell cycle regulatory, enzyme, nucleic acid binding, immunity, signal transducer, et al 11 function types. III Some genes among the clustered genes have known to respond to ionizing radiation, DNA damage, such as IL8, EGR1, NFKBIA, PPP1R15A, FOS, JUN, GOS2, and DUSP1. IV Expressive changes of some genes showed shapes of flying hours-dependent. It is concluded that: (1) The gene expression profile is different between aircrew and ground people. (2) The expression levels of response genes to DNA damage, ionizing radiation occurred changes significantly, which prove that the atmosphere cosmic radiation is important facto influencing aircrew health.