High-resolution melting analysis for rapid screening of BRCA1 and BRCA2 Spanish mutations
Inmaculada de Juan1, Eva Esteban, Sarai Palanca
1Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University Hospital La Fe, Avd. Campanar 21, Valencia 46009, Spain.
Abstract:
The majority of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation detection procedures include screening methods, all of which are time-consuming. High-resolution melting (HRM) is a promising pre-screening method of gene scanning that combines simplicity and rapid identification of genetic variants. We evaluated HRM in the screening of BRCA1/2 Spanish mutations. We studied 40 BRCA1 and 47 BRCA2 DNA samples with different Spanish mutations. We included a group of 20 unknown DNAs from patients with sporadic breast cancer (BC). The assay was performed with the LightCycler 480 Instrument (Roche). The HRM discriminates all the BRCA1/2 Spanish mutations studied from wild-type DNA. Besides, 54 out of 87 mutations were clearly differentiated from each other. In sporadic BC 11 polymorphisms and three unclassified variants were found in both genes. HRM is a valuable method for rapid screening of BRCA1/2 Spanish mutations and is capable of differentiating new genetic variants in PCR products.


