Nucleic Acids Research, Vol 27, Issue 22 4436-4443, Copyright © 1999 by Oxford University Press
N Masuda, T Ohnishi, S Kawamoto, M Monden and K Okubo
Formalin-fixed archival samples are known to be poor materials for
molecular biological applications. We conducted a series of experiments to
understand the alterations in RNA in fixed tissue. We found that
formalin-fixed tissue was resistant to solubilization by chaotropic agents.
However, proteinase K completely solubilized the fixed tissue and enabled
the extraction of almost the same amount of RNA as from a fresh sample. The
extracted RNA did not show apparent degradation. However, as reported,
successful PCR amplification was limited to short targets. The nature of
such 'fixed' RNA was analyzed using synthetic homo-oligo RNAs. The
heterogeneous increase in molecular weight of the RNAs, measured by
MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, showed that all four bases showed addition of
mono-methylol (-CH(2)OH) groups at various rates. The modification rate
varied from 40% for adenine to 4% for uracil. In addition, some adenines
underwent dimerization through methylene bridging. The majority of the
methylol groups, however, could be removed from bases by simply elevating
the temperature in formalin- free buffer. This demodification proved
effective in restoring the template activity of RNA from fixed tissue. The
improvement in PCR results suggested that more than half of the
modification was removed by this demodification.
ARTICLES
Analysis of chemical modification of RNA from formalin-fixed samples and optimization of molecular biology applications for such samples
Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Osaka University, 1-3, Yamada-oka, Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan.
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