Computer analysis of two-dimensional electrophoresis gels as a tool in cell biology: study of the protein expression of human keratinocytes from normal to tumor cells.

The usefulness of computer analysis of two-dimensional electrophoresis gels has been investigated on the example of human keratinocytes transformation. For this purpose, the protein expression of various keratinocytes strains from normal to tumor cells has been analysed by two-dimensional electrophoresis. The resulting gels have been submitted to computer analysis, including various data analysis techniques allowing to select spots on the gels or to classify the gels themselves. The latter techniques appeared very useful, since they demonstrated that the major transition in words of variation of the protein expression lies at the normal cell/transformed cell transition rather than at the transformed cell/tumorigenic cell transition.