A polymorphism in the mouse crg-2/IP-10 gene complicates chemokine gene expression analysis using a commercial ribonuclease protection assay.

ABSTRACT

The use of multiprobe RPAs is becoming an increasingly popular method for the detection and quantitation of RNA levels in cells and tissues. Here we report that due to a polymorphism in the 3'-noncoding region of the mouse Crg-2/IP-10 gene, the mCK-5 chemokine probe set available from Pharmingen can yield aberrant signal patterns with RNA samples from BALB/c, MRL and possibly other mouse strains that may lead to false conclusions regarding expression of the Crg-2/IP-10 and MCP-1 genes.