A new approach for screening for Y microdeletions:: Capillary electrophoresis combined with fluorescent multiplex PCR

Purpose: To apply capillary electrophoresis for rapid screening for Y microdeletions. Methods: A set of 25 specific sequence tagged sites that cover the azoospermia factor a, b, and c regions of the Y chromosome was amplified in 5 fluorescent multiplex sets each including 5 primer pairs. One of the primers of each pair was labeled with a fluorescent tag attached to the 5'-end. After PCR amplification, analysis of the obtained PCR products was performed using capillary electrophoresis (ABI Prism 3100 Genetic Analyzer). The method was employed to determine Y microdeletions in azoospermic (n = 49) and severe oligozoospermic (n = 149) men. Results: The number of PCR cycle (from 45 to 30) and the amount of DNA template (20-fold) used in fluorescent multiplex PCR were reduced because of the high sensitivity of capillary electrophoresis. Approximately 1000 multiplex PCR sets from 198 patients were analyzed simultaneously within 50 h. Y microdeletions were found in 3 out of the 198 azoospermic or severe oligozoospermic men. Conclusions: Application of capillary electrophoresis for detection of PCR products provides a semiautomated, high throughput method for rapid screening for microdeletions on the Y chromosome.