Validation of the linear amplification of single bovine embryos

To generate expression profiles from single embryos, a protocol for linear amplification of RNA was developed on the basis of Baugh et al. (15). Linear amplification enabled production of sufficient amounts of aRNA for the microarray experiments and has been shown to reliably amplify the initial mRNA population (15, 18-20). Approximately 5 ng of total RNA can be isolated from a blastocyst-stage embryo (21); therefore, it was necessary to carry out multiple rounds of amplification. To test the reproducibility and fidelity of the amplification procedure, a validation experiment was conducted using RNA from the kidney tissue of a newborn calf. Two replicates of the bovine kidney RNA were amplified and hybridized to the microarray. Comparisons were made between aRNA (rounds 1, 2, and 3) and unamplified RNA. Keywords: cDNA microarray Hybridization of cDNA from amplified RNA/unamplified RNA to custom bovine 7,872 cDNA microarray