Free Lunchtime Workshop
12:45-13:30, 26 May 2010
Ulster Room
ScreenTape R6K - A Novel Method for Objective and Reproducible Quality Control of RNA Samples
Dr. Denise Barrault – Research Product Manager, Lab901 Ltd, Edinburgh, UK
The use of microarray technologies and RT-qPCR has revolutionised several fields of the life sciences, such as expression profiling and diagnostics. However, numerous potential sources of variation, particularly in the quality of the processed samples, have raised concerns regarding assay consistency and data quality. Previous studies have highlighted RNA integrity as having a major effect on microarray and RT-qPCR data quality, to the extent that RNA quality control is becoming recognised as an essential check point before downstream processing of RNA for all experiments.
Dr. Barrault will be demonstrating ScreenTape R6K, a fully automated analysis platform that delivers the ScreenTape Degradation Value (SDV) for total RNA samples. This objective quality metric has been validated by LGC (the UK’s leading independent testing laboratory) and shown to accurately predict the quality of RNA starting material. LGC also showed equivalence between the SDV and the Agilent RIN value in a benchmarking study of Lab901’s ScreenTape R6K against Agilent’s RNA 6000 Nano Chip. In this study, SDV was shown to act as an indicator of sample performance in Whole Human Genome 4 x 44K Gene Expression microarray experiments (Agilent), predicting the performance of the assay. ScreenTape R6K also proves to be a useful tool in determining genomic DNA (gDNA) contamination of total RNA samples.
Dr. Barrault will show that a compared to traditional a microfluidic device, Lab901’s platform eliminates steps such as gel reagent prep, chip priming and chip-vortexing. Cross priming and sample carry-over problems are eliminated as ScreenTape R6K uses an individual micro-gel for each sample analysis, which also means that the device can be used more than once. It is possible to run as little as 1 sample on ScreenTape, reserving the rest of the available channels for future experiments therefore eliminating the need to batch samples. As well as describing Lab901’s cutting edge technology this workshop will demonstrate that Lab901’s platform is easy to use and provides a robust method for RNA analysis.