Summary
Circulating fetal RNA in maternal plasma has offered a new approach for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis and monitoring. Circulating fetal RNA markers could potentially be used for all pregnant women without being limited by fetal–maternal genetic polymorphisms and fetal gender. Over the past few years, encouraging findings have been reported on the detection and possible clinical applications of circulating fetal RNA. Placental-derived RNA has been shown to be easily detectable in maternal plasma during pregnancy and rapidly cleared after delivery. Such observations suggest that the placenta is an important organ for releasing fetal RNA into maternal plasma. Noninvasive prenatal gene expression profiling of the placenta also has been demonstrated to be feasible by analyzing the circulating placental RNA in maternal plasma. Thus, circulating placental RNA is a potentially useful tool for noninvasive investigation of the placenta. Here, we describe a systematic method for efficient development of new placental-specific RNA markers that could be detected in maternal plasma. The method is based on the use of oligonucleotide microarray (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA) technology to simultaneously analyze >39,000 RNA transcripts in the placenta. This development has implication for the development of new markers\break for studying disease conditions associated with placental pathology, such as preeclampsia.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ng, E. K., Tsui, N. B., Lau, T. K., et al. (2003) mRNA of placental origin is readily detectable in maternal plasma. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 4748–4753.
Ng, E. K., Leung, L. N., Tsui, N. B., et al. (2003) The concentration of circulating corticotropin-releasing hormone mRNA in maternal plasma is increased in preeclampsia. Clin. Chem. 49, 727–731.
Ng, E. K., El-Sheikhah, A., Chiu, R. W., et al. (2004) Evaluation of human chorionic gonadotropin beta-subunit mRNA concentrations in maternal serum in aneuploid pregnancies: a feasibility study. Clin Chem. 50, 1055–1057.
Tsui, N. B.., Chim, S. S., Chiu, R. W., et al. (2004) Systematic micro-array based identification of placental mRNA in maternal plasma: towards non-invasive prenatal gene expression profiling. J. Med. Genet. 41, 461–467.
Lipshutz, R. J., Fodor, S. P., Gingeras, T. R., and Lockhart, D. J. (1999) High density synthetic oligonucleotide arrays. Nat. Genet. 21, 20–24.
Lui, Y. Y., Chik, K. W., Chiu, R. W., Ho, C. Y., Lam, C. W., and Lo, Y. M. (2002) Predominant hematopoietic origin of cell-free DNA in plasma and serum after sex-mismatched bone marrow transplantation. Clin Chem. 48, 421–427.
Ng, E. K., Tsui, N. B., Lam, N. Y., et al. (2002) Presence of filterable and nonfilterable mRNA in the plasma of cancer patients and healthy individuals. Clin. Chem. 48, 1212–1217.
Bustin, S. A. (2000) Absolute quantification of mRNA using real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assays. J. Mol. Endocrinol. 25, 169–193.
Gross, S. J., Ferreira, J. C., Morrow, B., et al. (2002) Gene expression profile of trisomy 21 placentas: a potential approach for designing noninvasive techniques of prenatal diagnosis. Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. 187, 457–462.
Reimer, T., Koczan, D., Gerber, B., Richter, D., Thiesen, H. J., and Friese, K. (2002) Microarray analysis of differentially expressed genes in placental tissue of pre-eclampsia: up-regulation of obesity-related genes. Mol. Hum. Reprod. 8, 674–680.
Xia, X., McClelland, M., and Wang, Y. (2005) WebArray: an online platform for microarray data analysis. BMC Bioinformatics 6, 306.
Irizarry, R. A., Wu, Z., and Jaffee, H. A. (2006) Comparison of Affymetrix GeneChip expression measures. Bioinformatics 22, 789–794.
Churchill, G. A. (2002) Fundamentals of experimental design for cDNA microarrays. Nat. Genet. 32 (Suppl.), 490–495.
Yang, Y. H. and Speed, T. (2002) Design issues for cDNA microarray experiments. Nat. Rev. Genet. 3, 579–588.
Lee, M. L., Kuo, F. C., Whitmore, G. A., and Sklar, J. (2000) Importance of replication in microarray gene expression studies: statistical methods and evidence from repetitive cDNA hybridizations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97, 9834–9839.
Wyatt, S. M., Kraus, F. T., Roh, C. R., Elchalal, U., Nelson, D. M., and Sadovsky, Y. (2005) The correlation between sampling site and gene expression in the term human placenta. Placenta 26, 372–379.
Acknowledgments
This project is supported by the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITS/195/01) and an Earmarked Research Grant from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (CUHK 4474/03M).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Humana Press, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Tsui, N.B.Y., Lo, Y.M.D. (2008). A Microarray Approach for Systematic Identification of Placental-Derived RNA Markers in Maternal Plasma. In: Hahn, S., Jackson, L.G. (eds) Prenatal Diagnosis. Methods in Molecular Biology™, vol 444. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-066-9_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-066-9_22
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-1-58829-803-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-59745-066-9
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols