Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Molecular Biology Reports https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-019-04692-z ORIGINAL ARTICLE Sexual dimorphism in the expression of GKN2 and FOXA2 genes in the human stomach Reza Mohammadi 1  · Zahra Mohammadi 1  · Reza Abedi 1  · Fatemeh Chireh 1  · Abdolreza Balali 2  · Parisa Mohamadynejad 1  · Sadegh Shirian 3,4,5  · Mehdi Moghanibashi 6 Received: 2 October 2018 / Accepted: 9 February 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract A large proportion of the transcriptome is sex biased in a wide range of taxa. Sexually dimorphic genes expression is highly tissue-dependent. Although gastric cancer exhibits sex bias to some extent, sexually dimorphic gene expression in the stomach is yet to be fully understood. The aim of the present study was to compare the expression levels of 12 genes in the gastric tissue between age-matched healthy men and women of diferent age groups. A total of 70 human antrum gastric tissue samples were obtained by endoscopy. The diference in expression levels of the 12 intended genes between two genders was investigated using quantitative Real-Time PCR, following total RNA extraction. The results indicated that the expression levels of both the GKN2 (7.2-fold, p < 0.001) and FOXA2 (3.7-fold, p = 0.003) were signifcantly higher in men compared to those in women. In addition, FOXA1 gene expression was age-dependent only in women. Interestingly, the expression level of FOXA1 was signifcantly higher in premenopausal women compared to postmenopausal women (2.53-fold, p = 0.016). The expression levels of some of the investigated genes in this study were sex-dependent in the stomach. This sexual dimorphism in gene expression might infuence the diferential susceptibility to the gastric cancer between the sexes. Keywords Sexual dimorphism · Gastric cancer · GKN2 · FOXA2 · FOXA1 Introduction Sexual dimorphism is detected in many human diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, type I diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus [1, 2], and several types of cancer [3]. Hormonal and genetic diferences between males and females could signifcantly infuence the risk of disease as well as its course [4]. Despite the shared underlying genome, there are remark- able diferences between the two sexes in regard to gene expression in many organisms, which are meditated by dif- ferential transcription levels. This condition is referred to as sexual dimorphism in gene expression or sex-biased gene expression [5]. Despite the fact that the anatomical and hormonal dif- ferences between the sexes are well described, only a few studies have been conducted to disclose these diferences at the transcriptional levels in mammalian somatic tissues. The importance of sexual dimorphism in gene expression is an emerging feld of study. Many studies have recently indicated that a large proportion of the transcriptome is sex biased in an extensive range of taxa, including insects, nem- atodes, birds and mammals [6–8]. The most extensive study regarding sexual dimorphism in gene expression has shown that expression of more than 10,000 sex-biased among vari- ous somatic tissues in mouse [9]. There are considerable number of epidemiological records indicating that the incidence of gastric cancer is * Mehdi Moghanibashi mehdimoghani@yahoo.com 1 Department of Biology, Faculy of Basic Sciences, Shahrekord Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrekord, Iran 2 Imam Ali Hospital, Farokhshar, Shahrekord, Iran 3 Department of Pathology, School of Veterinary Medicine, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran 4 Shiraz Molecular Pathology Research Center, Dr Daneshbod Pathol Lab, Shiraz, Iran 5 Biotechnology Research Inistitute, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran 6 Department of Genetics, School of Medicine, Kazerun Branch, Islamic Azad University, P.O. Box: 73135-168, Kazerun, Iran