We then selected a number of genes that were of interest based on the literature for relevance to asthma (A disintegrin and metalloproteinase with thrombospondin motifs 1 (ADAMTS1)21, desmoplakin (DSP)22 and glucocorticoid receptor (GR)23) or for relevance in TGF-β pathways (SMAD2 and SMAD7)24 and analysed the samples by real-time PCR (Fig. 5). Here, SMAD2 is linked to asthma.