Abstract: Objective This study aims to study the signal transduction pathway genes in ARDS(Acute respiratory distress syndrome ) of rats by genechip. Methods The total RNAs were isolated from lungs of normal and ARDS rats respectively. The RNAs were purified by oligotex. Both the mRNAs from two kinds of tissues were reversely transcribed to cDNA with the incorporation of fluorescent-labelled dUTP to prepare the hybridization probes. The mixed probes were hybridized to cDNA microarray. Picture signals of fluorescence in gene array were scanned and compared by CapitlBio Molecule Annotation System V4.0. Quantitative fluorescence RT-PCR was used to validate the results of genechip. Results The results showed that there were 2 genes up-regulated and 9 genes down-regulated over 1.5 times in lung tissues of ARDS rats，and these genes were involved in 11 signal transduction pathways. Conclusion: Many genes of signal transduction pathways expressed differentially in ARDS transcription profiles of rats.

Key words: ARDS, Genechip, signal transduction pathway