Defining the impact of maternal cell contamination on the interpretation of prenatal microarray analysis.

Purpose: To understand the ability of microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization to detect copy-number variation in the presence of maternal cell contamination.

Methods: To simulate maternal cell contamination, normal female DNA was mixed at various levels with DNA carrying known copy-number variations. Mixtures were run on a whole-genome 135K oligonucleotide-based array.