A comparative study of three different gene expression analysis methods.

Abstract

TNF-α regulates immune cells and acts as an endogenous pyrogen. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is one of the most commonly used methods for gene expression analysis. Among the alternatives to PCR, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) shows good potential in terms of specificity and sensitivity. However, few studies have compared RT-PCR and LAMP for human gene expression analysis. Therefore, in the present study, we compared one-step RT-PCR, two-step RT-LAMP and one-step RT-LAMP for human gene expression analysis. We compared three gene expression analysis methods using the human TNF-α gene as a biomarker from peripheral blood cells. Total RNA from the three selected febrile patients were subjected to the three different methods of gene expression analysis. In the comparison of three gene expression analysis methods, the detection limit of both one-step RT-PCR and one-step RT-LAMP were the same, while that of two-step RT-LAMP was inferior. One-step RT-LAMP takes less time, and the experimental result is easy to determine. One-step RT-LAMP is a potentially useful and complementary tool that is fast and reasonably sensitive. In addition, one-step RT-LAMP could be useful in environments lacking specialized equipment or expertise.