New Method Simplifies Blood Biomarker Discovery and Analysis

The strands are introduced to purified RNA sample, and according to the team, being effective immediately after RNA denaturation and add only ten minutes of incubation time to the whole complementary DNA synthesis procedure.

The locking DNA molecules bind specifically at globin RNA poly-A site that is needed for further analysis. Therefore the globin RNAs are "locked" prior downstream manipulations and are unavailable to cause technical biases in blood RNA biomarker applications. RNA concentrations and the RNA integrity number (RIN) were measured with an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer Total RNA Nano kit (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA) or Qubit Fluorometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA).

Kaarel Krjutškov, PhD, the lead author of the study, said, “The globin reduction rate of GlobinLock (GL) is sufficient for any applications. It reduces the globin prevalence from 63% before to 5% which makes it an effective tool for biotechnology companies as an additive to their kits.” The authors concluded that they had developed a simple and cost-effective method to overcome globin mRNA caused limitation in biomarker studies when whole-blood RNA samples are used. The data presented obtained by qPCR and RNA-seq proofs the GL positive reduction effect with adult human whole-blood RNA samples and indicates its potential for species. The study was published on August 12, 2016, in the journal Scientific Reports.

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Karolinska Institute
Agilent Technologies
Thermo Fisher Scientific