Biomarkers for Down Syndrome screening in murine fetal liver and placenta

The Ts1Cje mouse strain (Sago, 1998) contains a segmental trisomy of mouse chromosome 16 orthologous to the region of human chromosome 21 commonly associated with Down Syndrome. In this study, fetuses were obtained from wildtype mothers bred with either wildtype or Ts1Cje males. Gene expression profiles in fetal liver and placenta of wildtype and Ts1Cje fetuses were compared, to identify potential markers for application in human prenatal DS screening. A 48 array study with 24 arrays for placenta and 24 for fetal liver. For each tissue we used RNA from 24 individual embryos, i.e. six male and six female embryos from both genotypes.