Massive parallel signature sequencing (MPSS) is a procedure that is used to identify and quantify

mRNA In molecular biology, messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds to the genetic sequence of a gene, and is read by a ribosome in the process of Protein biosynthesis, synthesizing a protein. mRNA is ...

transcripts, resulting in data similar to

serial analysis of gene expression Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE) is a transcriptomic technique used by molecular biologists to produce a snapshot of the messenger RNA population in a sample of interest in the form of small tags that correspond to fragments of those tra ...

(SAGE), although it employs a series of biochemical and

sequencing In genetics and biochemistry, sequencing means to determine the primary structure (sometimes incorrectly called the primary sequence) of an unbranched biopolymer. Sequencing results in a symbolic linear depiction known as a sequence which succ ...

steps that are substantially different.

How it works

MPSS is a method for determining expression levels of mRNA by counting the number of individual mRNA molecules produced by each gene. It is "open ended" in the sense that the identity of the RNAs to be measured are not pre-determined as they are with gene expression microarrays. A sample of mRNA are first converted to complementary DNA (

cDNA In genetics, complementary DNA (cDNA) is DNA synthesized from a single-stranded RNA (e.g., messenger RNA (mRNA) or microRNA (miRNA)) template in a reaction catalyzed by the enzyme reverse transcriptase. cDNA is often used to express a speci ...

) using

reverse transcriptase A reverse transcriptase (RT) is an enzyme used to generate complementary DNA (cDNA) from an RNA template, a process termed reverse transcription. Reverse transcriptases are used by viruses such as HIV and hepatitis B to replicate their genomes, ...

, which makes subsequent manipulations easier. These cDNA are fused to a small

oligonucleotide Oligonucleotides are short DNA or RNA molecules, oligomers, that have a wide range of applications in genetic testing, research, and forensics. Commonly made in the laboratory by solid-phase chemical synthesis, these small bits of nucleic acids c ...

"tag" which allows the cDNA to be PCR amplified and then coupled to microbeads. After several rounds of sequence determination, using hybridization of fluorescent labeled probes, a sequence signature of ~16–20 bp is determined from each bead. Fluorescent imaging captures the signal from all of the beads, while affixed to a 2-dimensional surface, so DNA sequences are determined from all the beads in parallel. There is some amplification of the starting material so, in the end, approximately 1,000,000 sequence reads are obtained per experiment.

Overview

MPSS allows

transcripts to be identified through the generation of a 17–20 bp (

base pair A base pair (bp) is a fundamental unit of double-stranded nucleic acids consisting of two nucleobases bound to each other by hydrogen bonds. They form the building blocks of the DNA double helix and contribute to the folded structure of both DNA ...

) signature sequence adjacent to the 3'-end of the 3'-most site of the designated

restriction enzyme A restriction enzyme, restriction endonuclease, REase, ENase or'' restrictase '' is an enzyme that cleaves DNA into fragments at or near specific recognition sites within molecules known as restriction sites. Restriction enzymes are one class o ...

(commonly Sau3A or DpnII). Each signature sequence is cloned onto one of a million

microbeads Microbeads are manufactured solid plastic particles of less than one millimeter in their largest dimension. They are most frequently made of polyethylene but can be of other petrochemical plastics such as polypropylene and polystyrene. They are ...

. The technique ensures that only one type of DNA sequence is on a microbead. So if there are 50 copies of a specific transcript in the biological sample, these transcripts will be captured onto 50 different microbeads, each bead holding roughly 100,000 amplified copies of the specific signature sequence. The microbeads are then arrayed in a flow cell for sequencing and quantification. The sequence signatures are deciphered by the parallel identification of four bases by hybridization to fluorescently labeled encoders (Figure 5). Each of the encoders has a unique label which is detected after hybridization by taking an image of the microbead array. The next step is to cleave and remove that set of four bases and reveal the next four bases for a new round of hybridization to encoders and image acquisition. The raw output is a list of 17–20 bp signature sequences, that can be annotated to the human genome for gene identification.

Comparison with SAGE

The longer tag sequence confers a higher specificity than the classical SAGE tag of 9–10 bp. The level of unique gene expression is represented by the count of transcripts present per million molecules, similar to SAGE output. A significant advantage is the larger library size compared with SAGE. An MPSS library typically holds 1 million signature tags, which is roughly 20 times the size of a SAGE library. Some of the disadvantages related to SAGE apply to MPSS as well, such as loss of certain transcripts due to lack of

recognition site and ambiguity in tag annotation. The high sensitivity and absolute gene expression certainly favors MPSS. However, the technology is only available through Lynxgen Therapeutics, Inc. (then

Solexa Illumina, Inc. is an American biotechnology company, headquartered in San Diego, California. Incorporated on April 1, 1998, Illumina develops, manufactures, and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological funct ...

Inc till 2006 and then Illumina).

References

External links

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/genome/probe/doc/TechMPSS.shtml DNA sequencing methods Molecular biology

How it works

Overview

Comparison with SAGE

References

Further reading

External links