Concerning bulk cultures, the process of prolonged in vitro culture had a stronger general influence on the global gene expression patterns than the irradiation had. With increasing culture time, a larger number of genes differed in expression between irradiated and control cultures, but there seems not to be a few, readily identifiable genes, which were dramatically affected in all samples.
Apart from the indication of a number of individual genes, we have observed a tendency towards a more heterogeneous general gene expression pattern in irradiated cell clones. This may either be a consequence of the genomic instability, where multiple chromosomal lesions lead to changes in the regulation of neighbouring genes or, alternatively, the observed "transcriptomic diversification" could be a manifestation of an epigenetically de-regulated state of the cell with a globally relaxed control of normal regulatory constraints and therefore a more diversified evolution of sub clones in the culture. These properties of the system under study may constitute a model for early events in carcinogenic progression, and the dynamics of gene expression pattern changes in the irradiated clones compared to controls could permit a more comprehensive elucidation of such processes.
Furthermore, it was possible to identify a set of marker genes that correlated with the irradiation status of clones and which were also differentially expressed in some of the bulk culture comparisons. This constitutes a set of candidate genes that may be further studied in terms of their possible relevance for the long-term effects on the phenotype of the irradiated cells.