Abstract
Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is the most frequent congenital cardiac malformation in humans, and appears frequently associated with dilatation of the ascending aorta. This association is likely the result of a common aetiology. Currently, a Syrian hamster strain with a relatively high (∼40%) incidence of BAV constitutes the only spontaneous animal model of BAV disease. The characterization of molecular alterations in the aorta of hamsters with BAV may serve to identify pathophysiological mechanisms and molecular markers of disease in humans. In this report, we evaluate the expression of ten candidate reference genes in aortic tissue of hamsters in order to identify housekeeping genes for normalization using quantitative real time PCR (RT-qPCR) assays. A total of 51 adult (180–240 days old) and 56 old (300–440 days old) animals were used. They belonged to a control strain of hamsters with normal, tricuspid aortic valve (TAV; n = 30), or to the affected strain of hamsters with TAV (n = 45) or BAV (n = 32). The expression stability of the candidate reference genes was determined by RT-qPCR using three statistical algorithms, GeNorm, NormFinder and Bestkeeper. The expression analyses showed that the most stable reference genes for the three algorithms employed were Cdkn1β, G3pdh and Polr2a. We propose the use of Cdkn1β, or both Cdkn1β and G3pdh as reference genes for mRNA expression analyses in Syrian hamster aorta.
Highlights
Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is the most frequent congenital cardiac malformation in humans, with anestimated prevalence of 0.5% - 2% in the general population [1, 2]
Several lines of evidence indicate that the association between BAV and aortic dilatation may derive from a common aetiology
All the BAVs showed a dorso-ventral orientation of leaflets and sinuses, corresponding to human BAVs type A (A-P).In most BAVs, a raphe was localized in the middle of the ventral aortic sinus, sometimes encroaching towards the ventral leaflet (Fig 1C)
Summary
Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) is the most frequent congenital cardiac malformation in humans, with anestimated prevalence of 0.5% - 2% in the general population [1, 2]. BAV is frequently associated with dilatation of the ascending aorta [3, 4]. Affected patients are at risk of aortic. Several lines of evidence indicate that the association between BAV and aortic dilatation may derive from a common aetiology. Patients with BAV present a structurally abnormal ascending aorta that predisposes to the aortopathy [4, 6,7,8]. Several genetic pathways have been shown to be involved in BAV formation and pathogenesis [4, 7,8,9,10,11,12], the precise molecular mechanisms leading to BAV and aortic dilatation remain unknown
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