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. 2016 May 3:4:e1996.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.1996. eCollection 2016.

Determining the utility of veterinary tissue archives for retrospective DNA analysis

Firas M Abed  1 , Michael J Dark  2
Affiliations

Determining the utility of veterinary tissue archives for retrospective DNA analysis

Firas M Abed et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

Histopathology tissue archives can be an important source of specimens for retrospective studies, as these include samples covering a large number of diseases. In veterinary medicine, archives also contain samples from a large variety of species and may represent naturally-occurring models of human disease. The formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues comprising these archives are rich resources for retrospective molecular biology studies and pilot studies for biomarkers, as evidenced by a number of recent publications highlighting FFPE tissues as a resource for analysis of specific diseases. However, DNA extracted from FFPE specimens are modified and fragmented, making utilization challenging. The current study examines the utility of FFPE tissue samples from a veterinary diagnostic laboratory archive in five year intervals from 1977 to 2013, with 2015 as a control year, to determine how standard processing and storage conditions has affected their utility for future studies. There was a significant difference in our ability to obtain large amplicons from samples from 2015 than from the remaining years, as well as an inverse correlation between the age of the samples and product size obtainable. However, usable DNA samples were obtained in at least some of the samples from all years tested, despite variable storage, fixation, and processing conditions. This study will help make veterinary diagnostic laboratory archives more useful in future studies of human and veterinary disease.

Keywords: DNA extraction; Retrospective; Tissue archives.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there are no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. (A) The percentage of all samples generating a specific amplicon size. IRBP result arelisted in black, SDHD in red. (B) (IRBP) and (C) (SDHD)- DNA amplicons generated by year.
Numbers above each column indicate the number of samples successfully amplified.
Figure 2
Figure 2. (A) IRBP, (B) SDHD.
Mean maximum amplicon sizes for each year are represented by blue horizontal lines. The whiskers indicate the standard error of the mean.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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