Evaluation of the expression levels of BRAF mRNA in primary tumors of thyroid cancer using an ultrasensitive mutation assay.

Background: The BRAF gene encodes for the mutant BRAF protein, which triggers downstream oncogenic signaling in thyroid cancer. Since most currently available methods have focused on detecting BRAF mutations in tumor DNA, there is limited information about the level of BRAF mRNA in primary tumors of thyroid cancer, and the diagnostic relevance of these RNA mutations is not known.

Methods: Sixty-two patients with thyroid cancer and non-malignant thyroid disease were included in the study.

Nanobody-based chromatin immunoprecipitation.

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), followed by microarray hybridization (ChIP-chip) or high-throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq), is becoming a widely used powerful method for the analysis of the in vivo DNA-protein interactions at genomic scale.The success of ChIP largely depends on the quality of antibodies. Although polyclonal antibodies have been successfully used for ChIP, their production requires regular immunization and they exhibit high aspecificity and batch to batch variability.