The use of laser capture microdissection (LCM) to obtain epithelial cells lining the distal
airways for gene profiling is described. In the mouse, the distal airways are particularly
attractive for LCM as there is very high percentage of a single cell type, Clara cells, lining
these airways. It is shown that the RNA from distal airway epithelial cells harvested by LCM
is well preserved and that with linear amplification sufficient cRNA for microarray analysis
can be attained from small numbers of cells.