Selective measurement of α smooth muscle actin: why β-actin can not be used as a housekeeping gene when tissue fibrosis occurs

Abstract Background Prevalence of fibroproliferative diseases, including chronic kidney disease is rapidly increasing and has become a major public health problem worldwide. Fibroproliferative diseases are characterized by increased expression of α smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) that belongs to the family of the six conserved actin isoforms showing high degree homology. The aim of the present study was to develop real-time PCRs that clearly discriminate α-SMA and s-actin from other actin isoforms. Results Real-time PCRs using self-designed mouse, human and rat specific α-SMA or s-actin primer pairs resulted in the specific amplification of the artificial DNA templates corresponding to mouse, human or rat α-SMA or s-actin, however s-actin showed cross-reaction with the housekeeping γ-cyto-actin. We have shown that the use of improperly designed literary primer pairs significantly affects the results of PCRs measuring mRNA expression of α-SMA or s-actin in the kidney of mice underwent UUO. Conclusion We developed a set of carefully designed primer pairs and PCR conditions to selectively determine the expression of mouse, human or rat α-SMA and s-actin isoforms. We demonstrated the importance of primer specificity in experiments where the results are normalized to the expression of s-actin especially when fibrosis and thus increased expression of α-SMA is occur.