Method for optimizing methylation-specific PCR.

The methylation of the CpG islands that are associated with the promoters of numerous genes can be associated with gene silencing. Therefore, it is an important area of research, and several techniques have been developed for the rapid and sensitive analysis of methylation. One of these methods is methylation-specific PCR (1). Most commonly, the PCR conditions are optimized using DNA prepared from cell lines that have a relatively homogeneous methylation pattern. However, in the typical tissue specimen, there will be a mixture of cells, with a number of patterns of methylation. We report that the optimization steps, which are appropriate when working with DNA prepared from cell populations with uniform methylation patterns, are not appropriate when analyzing DNA from tissues

与许多基因启动子相关的CpG岛的甲基化可能与基因沉默有关。因此，这是一个重要的研究领域，并且已经开发了几种技术来快速和敏感的甲基化分析。这些方法之一是甲基化特异性PCR（1）。最常见的是，使用从具有相对均匀甲基化模式的细胞系制备的DNA优化PCR条件。但是，在典型的组织标本中，将有许多甲基化模式的细胞混合物。我们报告说，在分析组织中的DNA时，使用从具有均匀甲基化模式的细胞群制备的DNA工作时合适的优化步骤是不合适的