Comparative Study of the Influence of EDTA and Sodium Heparin on Long Term Storage of Cattle DNA

Blood collection in heparin tubes for cytogenetic, and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid(edta) tubes for molecular genetics applications respectively, are routine practices everywhere.if blood samples are required for cytogenetics as well as dna work, two samplesfrom each animal are usually collected, which leads to wastage of time and money. thepresent study tried to explore the possibilities of collecting a single blood sample in aheparinised tube for use in both applications. two blood samples were collected from thesame animals; one in a heparin tube and the other in an edta tube. dna was extractedand stored at the same temperature and for the same durations. comparative studiesrevealed that the dna samples extracted from blood using these two different coagulantsgive more or less the same quality of results especially for polymerase chain reaction(pcr) based applications in cattle. the purpose of the present study was to establish thepossibility of using heparin blood for chromosomal studies as well as for molecular biology.such a practice will obviously save time and money in collecting samples in duplicate.