Objective: To study the efficiency of polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) in detecting the DNA base mutation and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP).
Methods: By DNA sequencing and PCR-DGGE respectively, mutations in the D-loop of the mitochondrial genome were detected in patients with acute leukemia in period of diagnosis and remission, which was regarded as constitutional DNA. The comparison of results was made for evaluating above two methods. Also, the wild type DNA and mutational DNA were mixed at different proportions to mimic the presence of DNA polymorphism. PCR-DGGE was done to study its sensitivity for SNP.
Results: The specificity and sensitivity of PCR-DGGE in detecting base mutation were 100% and 97.1% respectively. And PCR-DGGE could even detect the presence of polymorphism at rate of 0.5%.
Conclusion: PCR-DGGE has high sensitivity and specificity and can be applied to detection of DNA mutation and SNP, which is better method for checking DNA mutations.