Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase is a reliable internal control in Western blot analysis of leukocyte subpopulations from children

To study differences in the development of immunity, leukocytes from cord blood are often compared with those from adult peripheral blood. Western blot analysis is a common method for detecting proteins. In this study, we investigated the reliability of using different housekeeping proteins (β-actin, β-tubulin, and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase [GAPDH]) as internal controls for different leukocyte subpopulations from infants, children, and adults. Our results showed that the expression levels of β-actin and β-tubulin were much lower in cord blood leukocytes than in adult leukocytes, and this expression pattern persisted in children up to 3 years old. Further study revealed that the β-actin expression level in newborns was especially lower in CD14-positive monocytes. However, cord blood and adult peripheral blood monocytes had similar expression levels of β-actin messenger RNA (mRNA). Further experiments showed that posttranslational regulation was responsible for the low β-actin expression level in neonatal monocytes. Thus, researchers should carefully assess the appropriate use of housekeeping gene-encoded proteins as internal standards to normalize samples for comparisons of different leukocyte populations from subjects of different ages. In this study, we determined that GAPDH was a more reliable internal control than others in Western blot analysis for comparing the development of immunity among infants, children, and adults.