The recent interest in nucleic acids in plasma and serum has opened up numerous new areas of investigation and new possibilities for molecular diagnosis. In oncology, tumor-derived genetic changes, epigenetic alterations, and viral nucleic acids have been found in the plasma/serum of cancer patients. These findings have important implications for the detection, monitoring, and prognostication o...

Our purpose was to evaluate whether maternal and fetal hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) concentrations in pregnancies with small for gestational age (SGA) infants are different from those in pregnancies with appropriate for gestational age (AGA) infants. Maternal and fetal circulating HGF concentrations were compared between 55 pregnancies with AGA infants and 16 pregnancies with SGA infants at b...

in plasma and showed that filterable GAPDH mRNA species are present, and therefore likely to be particle bound, whereas the majority of ␤-globin DNA is not filterable and thus is not particle bound. Our study analyzed cell-free nucleic acids in amniotic fluid for the presence of particle-associated mRNA species , and like Ng et al. (7), we found the greatest decrease in GAPDH mRNA after filtrat...

OBJECTIVE To examine the performance of the SensiGene Fetal RHD Genotyping Laboratory Developed Test (RHD Genotyping LDT) using circulating cell-free fetal DNA (ccff DNA) extracted from maternal plasma. METHODS ccff DNA was extracted from maternal blood from non-sensitized women with singleton pregnancies in two cohorts, one with a serotype reference (11-13 weeks' gestation) and one with the ...

In 1947, Mandel and Métais discovered the unusual phenomenon of circulating cell-free DNA (1 ). Although one might naively think that DNA is found only in the nuclei of cells, it turns out that a substantial amount of small DNA fragments circulates within the blood. These molecules are not part of intact cells but are the detritus of dead and apoptosed cells that have spilled their guts into th...

the online Data Supplement). The fetal-specific allele was positively detected in 36 of the 41 SABER analyses in which the fetal genotype was informative (Table 1). When applied as a panel, the assays were able to detect the presence of the paternally inherited, fetal-specific allele in at least one of the informative SNPs in all of the cases (Table 1). There was no false-positive detection. In...

Isolation of cell free fetal DNA (cffDNA) from maternal serum usually leads to very low concentrations of DNA impeding further resolving through conventional methods of electrophoresis. Although several protocols have been described for capillary electrophoresis (CE) of double stranded DNA, they usually need using special polymers or coated capillaries which degrade over time. Herein, we propos...

The Potential Usefulness of Free Fetal DNA for Prenatal Gender Determination in Blood Plasma Pregnant Goat

Discovery of cell free fetal DNA in 1997 has deeply changed the outlook of prenatal diagnosis approaches as most of the clinically established screening tests are not sensitive/specific enough while the current practical diagnostic tests are also invasive in their nature. The most common prenatal screening test is routinely practiced for the diagnosis of Down syndrome (DS) which includes a 10% ...

Using murine models, primitive hematopoietic cells capable of repopulation have been shown to reside in various anatomic locations, including the aortic gonad mesonephros, fetal liver, and bone marrow. These sites are thought to be seeded by stem cells migrating through fetal circulation and would serve as ideal targets for in utero cellular therapy. In humans, however, it is unknown whether si...