Microarray analysis requires RNA of very high integrity. As a standard practice all samples submitted to the core must be analyzed for integrity using an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer, to confirm that the ratio of 18S:28S ribosomal subunit RNA is close to the theoretical maximum of 2.5. The bioanalyzer provides a complete RNA profile with as little as 5 ng ml -1 total or poly A + RNA and can quickly reveal sample degradation.

Your samples can be submitted to us for RNA extraction. This simply involves isolating your sample or cells and lysing them in either RLT Buffer or Trizol, prior to submitting them. If prepared correctly, almost all RNA samples prepared from animal tissues should look like the high quality RNA trace shown to the left. However, with some tissues that have a high RNase content, such as adult pancreas, a trace similar to that of the partially degraded RNA sample might be expected. It is very important that there is consistency in the quality of your RNA samples within an experiment, and samples that produce a high quality trace should never be compared with a sample that showed partial degradation. At our discretion we will reject samples that we consider to be of low quality, as our experience has shown us that they will not produce reliable data.