Formic acid decalcification of bone marrow trephines degrades DNA: alternative use of EDTA allows the amplification and sequencing of relatively long PCR products
- Department of Pathology, Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Healthcare Trust, Barrack Road, Exeter EX2 5DW, UK
- Department of Haematology, Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Healthcare Trust
- Molecular Genetics, Division of Clinical Science, School of Postgraduate Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX2 5AX, UK
- Department of Pathology, Level E (813), South Block, Southampton General Hospital, Tremona Road, Southampton SO16 6YD, UK
We recently reported a new method for the extraction of DNA from paraffin wax embedded bone marrow trephine biopsies.1 The DNA extracted from EDTA decalcified bone marrow trephine biopsies using this method was sufficiently intact to allow the amplification and sequencing of relatively long polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products, including the 600 bp t(11;14) MTCA PCR product. A shorter 294 bp PCR product could only be amplified from six of 10 formic acid decalcified bone marrow trephine biopsies reported in a previous study by Provan et al.2 These findings suggested a correlation between DNA degradation and formic acid decalcification, but required a comparative study for confirmation.J Clin Pathol: Mol Pathol 2000;53:336–337
We have subsequently extracted DNA from 11 formic acid decalcified bone marrow trephine biopsies using our method and determined the …
