Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma: Clinical Significance and Detection by High-Resolution Melting.

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) can have a variety of implications for the progression and development of papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTCs). Identification of SNPs, either as germline variants or mutations occurring in tumor tissue, can thus have useful implications for patient management. There are many potential methods that can be used to identify a specific SNP or other genetic variant, and among these is high-resolution melting (HRM). HRM can be used to detect the presence of a genetic variant in a single sealed tube, involving undertaking a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the presence of a saturating intercalating dye. Once PCR is complete, the amplicons produced can be melted through incremental raising of the temperature and the genotype of individual samples determined by changes in the change in fluorescence as the fluorescent dye is released by the melting DNA. In this chapter, we detail a method for the genotyping of DNA samples using HRM.