Yount, G., and Rachlin, K. (2014) A novel mouthwash protocol for noninvasive genomic analyses. The International Journal of Psychosocial Genomics: Consciousness and Health Research 1.1: 12-17.
Abstract
Peripheral blood cells provide a window into the communication between the mind and body at the genomic level. Progress in this area has been slow, however, primarily due to limitations associated with venipuncture for drawing blood. This study developed a noninvasive, mouthwash-based protocol for collecting neutrophils and harvesting ribonucleic acid (RNA). The RNA Integrity Numbers (RIN) determined for two independent RNA samples obtained for salivary neutrophils collected from the same subject were 9.0 and 8.8, and expression levels for the interleukin 1 beta and interleukin 8 genes were reliably measured by quantitative real-time reversetranscription polymerase chain reaction analysis. In conclusion, harvesting RNA of sufficient quality for gene expression analyses from salivary neutrophils collected by a mouthwash based protocol is feasible. Further characterization is needed to determine optimal conditions for investigating differential gene regulation, including characterization of the most reliable refrence genes for normalizing data obtained from this subpopulation of blood cells.
