Data acquisition and analysis were performed on a FACScalibur flow cytometer (Becton Dickinson) using Cell-Quest software. Identification of leukemic cells was performed using CD45 intensity versus SSC dot plots. Antigen expression was considered to be positive when the percentage learn more of positive leukemic cells was equal or greater than 20%. Preparation of RNA and cDNA synthesis BMNCs were separated using Lymphoprep and lysed with Trizol (In Vitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Two micrograms of total RNA was reverse transcribed to
cDNA in a total reaction volume of 40 μl containing 5× buffer, dNTPs 10 mM each, random hexamers 10 μM, RNAsin 80 units
and 200 units of MMLV reverse transcriptase (MBI Fermentas, USA). Samples were incubated for 10 min at 25°C, 60 min at 42°C, and then stored at -20°C. RQ-PCR RQ-PCR was performed using EvaGreen dye (BIOTIUM, Hayward, CA, USA) on a 7300 Thermo cycler (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). Real-time fluorescent data were collected and analyzed with SDS 1.3 software (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). The baseline fluorescence intensities were fixed at cycles 6-15 by default and 0.01 was set as the Selleck PRI-724 threshold to determine the cycle threshold (CT) value. The primers of GRAF and housekeeping gene ABL were designed against GenBank-published sequences (NM_015071 and NM_14752) with the software
Primer Express 2.0 (Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA, USA). The primer sequences are as follows: GRAF forward 5′-ATTCCAGCAGCAGCTTACA-3′, reverse 5′-GATGAGGTGGGCA TAGGG-3′, ABL forward 5′-TCCTCCAGCTGTTATCTGGAAGA-3′, reverse 5′-TCCAACGA GCGGCTTCAC-3′, with expected PCR products of 166 bp and 118 bp, respectively. PCR was performed in a final volume of 25 μl, containing 100 ng of cDNA, 0.2 mM of dNTP, 4 mM of MgCl2, 0.4 μM of primers, 1.2 μl of EvaGreen, 1.0 U of Taq DNA Polymerase (MBI Fermentas, USA). Amplification consisted of an initial denaturation step of 94°C for 4 min followed by 40 cycles of a denaturation step at 94°C for 30 s, an annealing step at 62°C for 30 s, an extension step of 72°C for 30 s, and an fluorescence MRT67307 cell line collection step at 82°C for 30 s, followed by a final SPTBN5 extension of 72°C for 10 min. Sterile H2O without cDNA used as no-template control (NTC) in each assay. The copies of GRAF and ABL mRNA were calculated automatically by the software. The relative amount of GRAF was normalized using the following formula: N GRAF = (copies of GRAF/copies of ABL) × 100. Amplified RQ-PCR products from three samples were sequenced (Shanghai GeneCore BioTechnologies Co., Ltd., China). Statistical analyses Statistics was performed using the SPSS 13.0 software package (SPSS, Chicago, IL).