Gene and protein expression profiling techniques have been used to identify alcohol-induced changes in gene expression in both cultured cells and animal models of alcoholism (reviewed in (Mayfield et al., 2008)). Alcohol alters the expression of genes involved in a wide variety of cellular functions including catecholamine metabolism, signal transduction cascades, protein trafficking, and oxidative stress responses. These studies suggest that specific patterns of gene expression may underlie alcohol-related phenotypes. In previous studies, we and others have used cDNA and oligonucleotide microarrays to identify genes with altered expression following long-term alcohol consumption(Lewohl et al., 2000; Liu et al., 2004; Liu et al., 2006; Mayfield et al., 2002) as well as the effects of concomitant diseases such as liver cirrhosis (Liu et al., 2007). These studies identified genes that likely underlie the adaptive response of neurons in the prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that is particularly susceptible to the effects of long-term alcohol abuse and include genes involved in myelination, ubiquitination, apoptosis, cell adhesion, neurogenesis, and neural disease. Genes involved in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer disease were also
