Quantitative detection of the expression product of tumor suppressor gene ING1 by molecular beacon fluorescence probe

Three molecular beacons (MBs) were synthesized to find a suitable probe to hybridize the expression of ING1 gene, a recently identified tumor suppressor gene. The loop sequences of MB1 and MB2 are the anti sense and sense sequence of ING1, respectively. The sequence of MB3 is a piece of ssRNA sequence in tobacco mosaic virus, which has no analogy to human gene. MB1 is the most suitable probe because MB1 has the highest fluorescence enhancement after hybridizing with RNA extracted from normal cell. A simple method has been built for the quantitative analysis of ING1 mRNA from nasopharyngral carcinoma (NPC) cell lines and normal cells. The results show that the concentration of ING1 mRNA in normal cells is higher than that in tumor cells. This result is consistent to that of RT-PCR detection. ING1 plasmid was delivered into living human NPC cells with liposome and the expression of ING1 by plasmid was monitored by the selected MB.