%0 Journal Article %T Stability of reference proteins in human placenta: general protein stains are the benchmark. %+ Institut Armand Frappier (INRS-IAF) %+ BioMed Research Centre [Montréal] %+ Laboratoire de Physiologie materno-foetale, Department of Biological Sciences %A Lanoix, D. %A St-Pierre, J. %A Lacasse, A. A. %A Viau, M. %A Lafond, J. %A Vaillancourt, C. %Z This study was financially supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC # 262011-2009) awarded to C Vaillancourt and from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR NET 2002-2007) awarded to J Lafond. D Lanoix received tudentships from the Fond de la recherche en Santé du Québec (FRSQ), AA Lacasse from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT) and the NSERC and J St-Pierre from the Réseau Québécois en reproduction (RQR)-NSERC-CREATE and the Fondation Armand Frappier scholarship program. %< avec comité de lecture %@ 0143-4004 %J Placenta %I Elsevier %V 33 %N 3 %P 151-6 %8 2012-03 %D 2012 %R 10.1016/j.placenta.2011.12.008 %M 22244735 %Z Life Sciences [q-bio]/ToxicologyJournal articles %X The stability of reference proteins in semi-quantitative Western blot experiments in normal and diseased placenta has never been studied. This study aims to determine the stability of five reference proteins and two general protein stains in placentas from preeclampsia, gestational diabetes mellitus and matched control pregnancies. The stability of the reference proteins was analysed using indicators of inter-group (P value) and intra-group (coefficient of variation) stability. The effect of different normalization strategies was determined by normalizing serotonin transporter (SERT) expression against the different reference protein markers. Results show significant expression variability of β-actin, glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase 1 (HPRT1), peptidylprolyl isomerase A (PPIA) and α-tubulin, and that amido black staining is the most stable reference protein marker. Furthermore, results show that SERT expression significantly differs according to the reference protein markers used for its normalization. The present study demonstrated the importance of using stable reference protein markers and normalization strategy in order to get correct results in semi-quantitative Western blot experiments in placental tissues. %G English %L pasteur-00818357 %U https://riip.hal.science/pasteur-00818357 %~ RIIP %~ INRS-IAF