APPLICABILITY OF DNA ISOLATED FROM SYNCYTIOTROPHOBLAST VESICLES TO GENE AMPLIFICATION AND MOLECULAR ANALYSIS

Maternal contamination of fetal DNA represents a major problem when hi ghly sensitive molecular techniques are used in the prenatal diagnosis of genetic diseases. For this reason, we have studied the possibility of using DNA isolated from syncytiotrophoblast vesicles as a target o f gene amplification (PCR). Three PCR systems were selected which incl uded a repetitive 149 bp fragment of the Y chromosome, the VNTR locus D1S80, and a portion of the beta-globin gene. The results of these exp eriments indicate that DNA isolated from syncytiotrophoblast vesicles is free of maternal contamination and is suitable for gene amplificati on and DNA analysis.