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Min-Yan Qiu

Publications and source records attributed to Min-Yan Qiu.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

[Optimization of T7-based RNA amplification system for cDNA microarray].

cDNA microarrays are powerful parallel tools for gene expression profiling analysis, which help us to understand the molecular mechanism of diseases and to identify potential targets for therapeutic intervention. However, their broader application are hampered by the large amount of RNA required: up to 200 microg of total RNA or 5 microg of mRNA for one chip, making analysis of small samples difficult. In this work, combined with a template switching effect, the T7 RNA linear amplification procedure was optimized, providing multiple copies of anti-sense RNA with reduced sample inputs: no more than 3 microg total RNA for one chip. Using the same RNA sample in all cases, the anti-sense RNA labeling method was compared with standard total RNA and mRNA methods by two sets of self-comparison experiments. Furthermore, the three methods in profiling analysis were compared with the same pair RNA samples. All the results indicated that the fidelity, reproducibility, and reliability showed no significant difference with conventional total RNA or mRNA microarrays.

DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases↗

[Validation of cDNA microarray technology].

cDNA microarray is a technological approach that has the potential to globally measure changes in mRNA expression levels. Self-comparison experiments with the same kind of tissue and differential expression experiments with the different kinds of tissue have been done to verify the reproducibility and the accuracy of this technique. The parameter of the reliability and the reproducibility of the microarray data were analyzed by correlation coefficient (R), coefficient of variation (CV) and false positive rate (FPR) etc. Meanwhile, the error resource also has been inspected. These results showed that generally the correlation coefficient of data from this cDNA microarray system was more than 0.9, the coefficient of variation was about 15%, and the false positive rate was below 3%. The result proves the accuracy of the cDNA microarray data. Consistence rate (CR) was advanced here as a new parameter to evaluate the reproducibility of two replicate experiments. It has some advantages over correlation coefficient and coefficient of variation. The influence of some important factors in the experiments, such as different concentration of spotted DNA, mRNA and total RNA, different batches of slides and different processes of labeling, have been investigated by comparing the results. It was shown that most of the false position produced by the experiment system could be reduced by replicate experiments.

Humans↗

A New Strategy for Optimizing the Translation Initiation Rate of Foreign Gene Expression in E. coli.

The translation initiation rate is greatly affected by the secondary structure of the translation initiation region (TIR) of mRNA. A novel system was established for improving the translation initiation rate of a foreign gene in E. coli. As a model, the 5' 114 bp coding sequence (38 amino acids from the start codon) of human proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) gene was fused with the lacZ' gene at its 5' end in vector pTZ19R. A Shine/Dalgarno (SD) sequence GAGGT was inserted to the -8 position of AUG by site-directed mutation. Then the flanking sequences of SD, which were the 6 nucleotides upstream the SD and the 7 nucleotides between SD and AUG, were randomly changed by PCR using a synthetic primer with partially random sequences. This random mutation led to potential variations in the secondary structure of the TIR of mRNA through base pairing with the 5' coding sequence. The 5' PCNA-LacZ' mRNA could be efficiently and specifically transcribed by inducible T7 RNA polymerase in E. coli strain JM 109 (DE3). There were 269 clones of 5' PCNA-LacZ' fusion plasmid selected first by the blue color on X-gal plate and then by hybridization with a 5' PCNA probe. Eight clones with different blue colors among the 269 clones were chosen for beta-galactosidase activity assay. The results showed that the difference between their enzyme activities was more than 20 fold, but there seemed no apparent difference at the transcription level as assayed by RNA dot hybridization, which suggested that the difference in the expression of the fusion protein was due to the different rate of translation initiation. Thus, by this strategy, an effective translation initiation region for the high expression of human PCNA gene in E. coli was obtained.

Journal Article↗