Abstract
Early neonatal adaptation to extrauterine life is i.a. dependent on effective mitochondrial biogenesis during foetal development. Understanding of mitochondrial biogenesis is limited, because only scarce data are available from prenatal studies including RNA analyses in human foetal tissues.
Aims of the study were focused on the factors affecting RNA quality in human placental tissue (HPT) including temperature, time period before HPT freezing and the Apgar score. In addition, optimal reference genes were studied by analysing six candidate genes (ATP5O, SDHA, TBP, HPRT, PMBS, ATP6) for mRNA quantification by qPCR in HPT.
Samples of HPT were obtained after the birth of 20 term neonates. Then RNA integrity, purity and yield were evaluated in dependence on the factors.The results showed that human placenta represents easily obtainable source of foetal tissue for studies concerning mitochondrial biogenesis.
We demonstrated that the critical limit for optimal storage and handling of HPT are the temperature and the time period before freezing of the samples. The reference genes ATP50 and SDHA were the most stable for mRNA quantification in HPT.