[Arabidopsis] RIN for plants

[Slovin, Janet]

Dear colleagues,

In "Eleven golden rules of Quantitative PCR" Plant Cell 20:1736, 2008,
the authors suggest checking the RNA integrity number (RIN) if using a
Bioanalyzer. Last year I was told by the Agilent rep that the algorithm
used to get this number was derived from animal data and would not be
valid to use for plants because it fails to take into account
chloroplast rRNA.  Agilent appears to be willing to derive a new
algorithm for plant samples, but needed input plant data from the
community. So far, I haven't seen anything come out about a new
algorithm from Agilent, so I'm wondering what other people are using.
I've been manually examining my ribosomal peak shapes and peak ratios,
checking for DNA, and just going with the concentrations the program
gives me for each sample.  I would greatly appreciate some guidance.

Thanks,

Janet

 

Janet Slovin, Ph.D.

Genetic Improvement of Fruit and Vegetables Laboratory USDA/ARS

10300 Baltimore Ave

Beltsville, MD 20705-2350

Tel: 301-504-5629

FAX: 301-504-5653

Please note new laboratory name

and new email address

janet.slovin from ars.usda.gov