TY - JOUR
T1 - Genome-Wide Profiling of RNA from Dried Blood Spots
T2 - Convergence with Bioinformatic Results Derived from Whole Venous Blood and Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells
AU - McDade, Thomas W.
AU - M. Ross, Kharah
AU - L. Fried, Ruby
AU - Arevalo, Jesusa M.G.
AU - Ma, Jeffrey
AU - Miller, Gregory E.
AU - Cole, Steve W.
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported by Grant Number 1R01HD074765 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and P30 AG017265 from the National Institute of Aging of the National Institutes of Health.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Society for Biodemography and Social Biology.
PY - 2016/5/3
Y1 - 2016/5/3
N2 - Genome-wide transcriptional profiling has emerged as a powerful tool for analyzing biological mechanisms underlying social gradients in health, but utilization in population-based studies has been hampered by logistical constraints and costs associated with venipuncture blood sampling. Dried blood spots (DBS) provide a minimally invasive, low-cost alternative to venipuncture, and in this article we evaluate how closely the substantive results from DBS transcriptional profiling correspond to those derived from parallel analyses of gold-standard venous blood samples (PAXgene whole blood and peripheral blood mononuclear cells [PBMC]). Analyses focused on differences in gene expression between African-Americans and Caucasians in a community sample of 82 healthy adults (age 18–70 years; mean 35). Across 19,679 named gene transcripts, DBS-derived values correlated r = .85 with both PAXgene and PBMC values. Results from bioinformatics analyses of gene expression derived from DBS samples were concordant with PAXgene and PBMC samples in identifying increased Type I interferon signaling and up-regulated activity of monocytes and natural killer (NK) cells in African-Americans compared to Caucasian participants. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of DBS in field-based studies of gene expression and encourage future studies of human transcriptome dynamics in larger, more representative samples than are possible with clinic- or lab-based research designs.
AB - Genome-wide transcriptional profiling has emerged as a powerful tool for analyzing biological mechanisms underlying social gradients in health, but utilization in population-based studies has been hampered by logistical constraints and costs associated with venipuncture blood sampling. Dried blood spots (DBS) provide a minimally invasive, low-cost alternative to venipuncture, and in this article we evaluate how closely the substantive results from DBS transcriptional profiling correspond to those derived from parallel analyses of gold-standard venous blood samples (PAXgene whole blood and peripheral blood mononuclear cells [PBMC]). Analyses focused on differences in gene expression between African-Americans and Caucasians in a community sample of 82 healthy adults (age 18–70 years; mean 35). Across 19,679 named gene transcripts, DBS-derived values correlated r = .85 with both PAXgene and PBMC values. Results from bioinformatics analyses of gene expression derived from DBS samples were concordant with PAXgene and PBMC samples in identifying increased Type I interferon signaling and up-regulated activity of monocytes and natural killer (NK) cells in African-Americans compared to Caucasian participants. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of DBS in field-based studies of gene expression and encourage future studies of human transcriptome dynamics in larger, more representative samples than are possible with clinic- or lab-based research designs.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84976435858&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/19485565.2016.1185600
DO - 10.1080/19485565.2016.1185600
M3 - Journal Article
C2 - 27337553
AN - SCOPUS:84976435858
SN - 1948-5565
VL - 62
SP - 182
EP - 197
JO - Biodemography and Social Biology
JF - Biodemography and Social Biology
IS - 2
ER -