Selection of reference genes for RT-qPCR studies in blood of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas)
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Marine Biology, Molecular Biology
- Keywords
- beluga, housekeeping, quantitative PCR, gene expression
- Copyright
- © 2016 Chen et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Selection of reference genes for RT-qPCR studies in blood of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1753v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1753v1
Abstract
Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) is used for research in gene expression, and it is vital to choose appropriate housekeeping genes (HKGs) as reference genes to obtain correct result. The purpose of this study is to determine stably expressed HKGs in blood of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) that can be the appropriate reference genes in relative quantification in gene expression research. Sixty blood samples were taken from 4 beluga whales. Thirteen candidate HKGs (ACTB, B2M, GAPDH, HPRT1, LDHB, PGK1, RPL4, RPL8, RPL18, RPS9, RPS18, TFRC, YWHAZ) were tested using RT-qPCR. The stability values of the HKGs were determined by four different algorithms. Comprehensive analysis of the results revealed that RPL4, PGK1 and ACTB are strongly recommended for use in future RT-qPCR studies in beluga blood samples. This research provides recommendation of reference gene selection, which may contribute to further mRNA relative quantification research in the peripheral blood leukocytes in captive cetaceans. The gene expression assessment of the immune components in blood have potential to serve as important approach to evaluating cetacean health influenced by environmental insults.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.