Bio-Rad Laboratories has announced the availability of a technical note that describes a new RNA quality indicator (RQI) available with the company's Experion automated electrophoresis system.
Technical note 5761, entitled 'Development and Validation of RQI: An RNA Quality Indicator for the Experion Automated Electrophoresis System', introduces RQI as a method to standardise and quantitate RNA integrity.
A specialised algorithm compares three regions of an electrophoretic profile of RNA samples to a series of standardised degraded RNA samples.
The RQI method returns a number between 10 (intact RNA) and one (highly degraded RNA) for each eukaryotic RNA sample run on an Experion RNA Stdsens or Highsens analysis chip.
It gives a consistent evaluation of RNA quality and is a convenient quantifier in determining the extent of degradation of RNA samples.
The RQI feature and Experion software displays the RNA integrity data in a convenient 'Run Summary' page.
The simple concept behind the RQI gives results that are comparable to RIN, another method for checking integrity.
It works well over a range of RNA concentrations (100pg to 5,000ng), is very reproducible, and is applicable to a range of mammalian tissues.
With the new software, researchers can quantitatively assess the integrity of their RNA samples before embarking on labour-intensive and costly projects.
