High sensitivity quality control of RNA samples using the RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit Application

This Application Note describes the use of the RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit for the quality control of small amounts of RNA using the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer. The main advantages of the RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit are its high sensitivity combined with its time saving experimental procedure. Here, we show experimental data that demonstrate the sensitivity of the RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit by the analysis of different amounts of highly dilute RNA samples. The results show the suitability of the RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit for quality control of total RNA and messenger RNA (mRNA) in a range from 200 pg/μl to 5000 pg/μl and 500 pg/μl to 5000 pg/μl, respectively. The reproducibility of the assay is also demonstrated. In order to provide an insight into the advantages of the RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit in combination with specific RNA isolation techniques, we present data from the RNA quality control (QC) of microdissected human kidney tissues. The RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit used with the Agilent 2100 bioanalyzer identified differences in RNA quality referring to different isolation and purification methods. In summary, we provide evidence that the RNA 6000 Pico LabChip kit is useful for the QC of very low amounts of RNA samples. The data clearly indicate a 25-fold increase of assay sensitivity in comparison with the well established RNA 6000 Nano LabChip kit. Rüdiger Salowsky Anna Henger