title: Development and evaluation of real competitive PCR for high-throughput quantitative applications.
abstract: Real competitive PCR (rcPCR) has been shown to have high sensitivity, reproducibility, and high-throughput potential. We describe further development and evaluation of this methodology as a tool for measuring nucleic acid abundance within a cell. Modifications to the original protocol allow analysis of gene expression levels using standard conditions regardless of mRNA abundance and assay type, thereby increasing throughput and ease of reaction setup while decreasing optimization time. In addition, we have developed a software package, TITAN, to automatically analyze the results. The details are relevant to researchers performing competitive PCR using any detection technique. The effectiveness of the described developments is demonstrated using 12 genes known to have differential expression in cell lines grown under normal and hypoxic conditions. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons to real-time PCR are presented. It is also demonstrated that the technique is capable of detecting submicroscopic chromosomal DNA deletions.
authors.affiliation: Genomics Group, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford, Oxon OX3 7BN, UK. gareth.elvidge@well.ox.ac.uk
authors.forename: Gareth P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Elvidge
authors.forename: Tom S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Price
authors.forename: Louisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Glenny
authors.forename: Jiannis
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ragoussis
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms; D018076:DNA, Complementary / Q000032:analysis / Q000302:isolation & purification; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D015345:Oligonucleotide Probes; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012984:Software; D019032:Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured
chemical_list: D018076:DNA, Complementary; D015345:Oligonucleotide Probes