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  • Biotechnical Methods Section BTS
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Biotechnical Methods Section (BTS)

Clonality analysis by methylation-specific PCR for the human androgen-receptor gene (HUMARA-MSP)

Leukemia volume 14, pages 207–212 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The human androgen-receptor gene (HUMARA) has been used for analysis of X chromosome inactivation (XCI) pattern because of a polymorphic short tandem repeat (STR) near the 5′-promoter region correlated with XCI. We introduce a novel method to analyze XCI pattern, named HUMARA methylation-specific PCR (HUMARA-MSP) assay, which analyzes methylation status of the HUMARA gene by bisulfite modification instead of a methylation-sensitive restriction enzyme. Although the original MSP method shows whether there is a methylated band or not, our HUMARA-MSP method identifies the patterns of methylated and unmethylated bands. Because this method identifies either unmethylated or methylated alleles in each PCR tube and shows opposite band patterns dependent on methylation status, we can assess the XCI pattern independently twice. This method can avoid false results by incomplete enzyme digestion and incomplete bisulfite modification will not affect the results. Extremely small quantities of samples, such as hematopoietic colonies, were also available for HUMARA-MSP assay. Because DNA modified by sodium bisulfite is also available for assessment of methylation status of other genes by setting specific primers for them, we performed the simultaneous assessment of clonality and aberrant hypermethylation of p15INK4B gene in myelodysplastic syndromes. These simultaneous assessments were easily possible and provided much information despite requiring only a small volume of DNA. The HUMARA-MSP assay may facilitate the analyses for pathogenesis of hematological disorders because of its simplicity, sensitivity and wide applicability.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Sonoko Hatano and Kimie Kondo for their excellent technical assistance. This study was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid from the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. First Department of Internal Medicine, Nagoya University School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan

    T Uchida, H Ohashi, E Aoki, Y Nakahara, H Saito & T Kinoshita

  2. Department of Internal Medicine, Tokai University School of Medicine, Isehara, Japan

    T Hotta

  3. Nagoya University School of Health Sciences, Nagoya, Japan

    T Murate

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  1. T Uchida
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  2. H Ohashi
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Uchida, T., Ohashi, H., Aoki, E. et al. Clonality analysis by methylation-specific PCR for the human androgen-receptor gene (HUMARA-MSP). Leukemia 14, 207–212 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2401631

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