Defining Housekeeping Genes Suitable for RNA-seq Analysis of the Human Allograft Kidney Biopsy Tissue

This study has used nine different normalization methods to derive housekeeping genes from a RNA-seq data set of 47611 transcripts derived from 30 biopsies. Overall design: The biopsies were collected in a variety of clinical settings, with 5 replicates each of the following clinicla settings: normal function, acute tubular injury, acute rejection, interstitial nephritis, interstitial fibrosis/tubular atrophy and polyomavirus nephropathy. Transcripts with coefficient of variation below the 2nd percentile were designated as housekeeping genes, and validated by showing their virtual absence in diseased allograft derived transcriptomic data sets available in the Gene Expression Omnibus.