A simple VNTR-PCR method for detecting maternal cell contamination in prenatal diagnosis

The effectiveness of variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs) was evaluated in the detection of maternal cell contamination. Nonradioactive PCRs were performed on 30 sets of prenatal tissue using VNTRs as primers. The combination of two VNTRs (YNZ22 and APOB) provided information on all 30 cases, distinguishing maternal-fetal genotype patterns and detecting maternal cell contamination in 5 of 30 prenatal cases. The amplification of these two VNTRs does not require radioactive or fluorescence labeling, and a small gel electrophoresis is sufficient to see the maternal-fetal genotype pattern. By this method, detection of maternal cell contamination in prenatal tissues can be obtained in 1 day, without the use of expensive instruments, thus providing DNA laboratories a very sensitive, rapid, and simple proof pretest on all prenatal tissues before performing the final genetic diagnostic testing.