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Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells
Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) is a sensitive and valuable technique to characterize cellular subpopulations and great advances have been made using this approach. Cells are often fixed with formaldehyde prior to the sorting process to preserve cell morphology and maintain the expression...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2013
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3759445/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24023909 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073849 |
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author | Russell, Julia N. Clements, Janice E. Gama, Lucio |
author_facet | Russell, Julia N. Clements, Janice E. Gama, Lucio |
author_sort | Russell, Julia N. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) is a sensitive and valuable technique to characterize cellular subpopulations and great advances have been made using this approach. Cells are often fixed with formaldehyde prior to the sorting process to preserve cell morphology and maintain the expression of surface molecules, as well as to ensure safety in the sorting of infected cells. It is widely recognized that formaldehyde fixation alters RNA and DNA structure and integrity, thus analyzing gene expression in these cells has been difficult. We therefore examined the effects of formaldehyde fixation on the stability and quantitation of nucleic acids in cell lines, primary leukocytes and also cells isolated from SIV-infected pigtailed macaques. We developed a method to extract RNA from fixed cells that yielded the same amount of RNA as our common method of RNA isolation from fresh cells. Quantitation of RNA by RT-qPCR in fixed cells was not always comparable with that in unfixed cells. In comparison, when RNA was measured by the probe-based NanoString system, there was no significant difference in RNA quantitation. In addition, we demonstrated that quantitation of proviral DNA in fixed cells by qPCR is comparable to that in unfixed cells when normalized by a single-copy cellular gene. These results provide a systematic procedure to quantitate gene expression in cells that have been fixed with formaldehyde and sorted by FACS. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3759445 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-37594452013-09-10 Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells Russell, Julia N. Clements, Janice E. Gama, Lucio PLoS One Research Article Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) is a sensitive and valuable technique to characterize cellular subpopulations and great advances have been made using this approach. Cells are often fixed with formaldehyde prior to the sorting process to preserve cell morphology and maintain the expression of surface molecules, as well as to ensure safety in the sorting of infected cells. It is widely recognized that formaldehyde fixation alters RNA and DNA structure and integrity, thus analyzing gene expression in these cells has been difficult. We therefore examined the effects of formaldehyde fixation on the stability and quantitation of nucleic acids in cell lines, primary leukocytes and also cells isolated from SIV-infected pigtailed macaques. We developed a method to extract RNA from fixed cells that yielded the same amount of RNA as our common method of RNA isolation from fresh cells. Quantitation of RNA by RT-qPCR in fixed cells was not always comparable with that in unfixed cells. In comparison, when RNA was measured by the probe-based NanoString system, there was no significant difference in RNA quantitation. In addition, we demonstrated that quantitation of proviral DNA in fixed cells by qPCR is comparable to that in unfixed cells when normalized by a single-copy cellular gene. These results provide a systematic procedure to quantitate gene expression in cells that have been fixed with formaldehyde and sorted by FACS. Public Library of Science 2013-09-02 /pmc/articles/PMC3759445/ /pubmed/24023909 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073849 Text en © 2013 Russell et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Russell, Julia N. Clements, Janice E. Gama, Lucio Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells |
title | Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells |
title_full | Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells |
title_fullStr | Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells |
title_full_unstemmed | Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells |
title_short | Quantitation of Gene Expression in Formaldehyde-Fixed and Fluorescence-Activated Sorted Cells |
title_sort | quantitation of gene expression in formaldehyde-fixed and fluorescence-activated sorted cells |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3759445/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24023909 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0073849 |
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