A Comparative Study on the Expression of Various Housekeeping Genes in the Organs of Different Mice Strains

Abstract

The expression of housekeeping genes significantly varies between organs and between strains. Therefore, it is highly required to find out the housekeeping gene that can be the most useful and reliable one, where inter-organ comparative studies on gene expression need to be performed. Keeping this issue in consideration, a comparative study of different housekeeping genes using organs of four different strains of mice was performed. Different organs, i.e., liver, kidney, spleen, brain, lung and heart were harvested from 6-week old healthy male mice strains (JAX 3H, C57BL/6J, BALB/C and nude mice; N=3). Subsequently, semi-quantitative PCR was performed to study the expression of Gapdh, β-actin, Hsp90 and B2M in various organs isolated, followed by densitometry and statistical analysis. The mRNA expressions of Gapdh in all the tissues of all four mice strains were relatively stable. The expression of β-actin across organs was stable in Balb C, nude mice and C57BL/6J strains of mice. However, in C3H strain, variable expression of β-actin was seen. The expression of Hsp90 was very stable in nude mice and C57BL/6J strain. However, HSP90 has shown unstable expression in BalbC and C3H strains. Furthermore, B2M expression was stable only in C3H strain within organs. However, in Balb C strain, its expression was differing in organ spleen. The semi-quantitative PCR results suggest that the expression of Gapdh as an internal control is slightly better than the expression of β-actin followed by Hsp90 and B2M during inter-organ comparison study of gene expression.

Keywords: Housekeeping genes, mRNA expression, semi-quantitative PCR

Cite this Article

Muyal Jai Prakash, Tyagi Amit, Singh Apurva, et al. A Comparative study on the expression of various housekeeping genes in the organs of different mice strains. Research & Reviews: A Journal of Biotechnology. 2015; 5(3): 1–10p.