Genetic background of the polygenic neural tube defect

In polygenic disorders we do not know exactly, how many genes are involved in the pathomechanism, but the analysis of fetal gene expression can get us closer to the solution. In our study we were searching for the genetic background of the polygenic neural tube defect, which is the second most common birth defect in the world (1 in 1000 live births). Our data revealed novel candidate genes, like SLAP, LST1 and BENE, which can play an important role in the pathogenesis of neural tube defects. We created a data warehouse from the results, suitable for further analysis. This study also demonstrates that a routinely collected amount of amniotic fluid (as small as 6 mL) is enough to successfully hybridize isolated RNA to expression arrays, making the ability to use the technique from normally collected amniotic fluid samples. Keywords: Prenatal gene expression signature We report an in vivo study in living human fetuses using oligonucleotide microarray analysis of fetal mRNA isolated from amniocytes, which were collected by amniocentesis. RNA was successfully isolated, amplified, labeled, and hybridized to whole-genome Affymetrix transcript arrays.