Robustness of gene expression signatures in leukemia: comparison of three distinct total RNA preparation procedures.

Microarray gene expression (MAGE) signatures allow insights into the transcriptional processes of leukemias and may evolve as a molecular diagnostic test. Introduction of MAGE into clinical practice of leukemia diagnosis will require comprehensive assessment of variation due to the methodologies. For the first time, we present a study focused on analyzing the impact of different RNA preparation procedures on gene expression data for different subtypes of pediatric acute leukemias. Keywords: comparison of various total RNA preparation procedures We systematically assessed the impact of three different total RNA isolation procedures on variation in expression data: method A: lysis of mononuclear cells, followed by lysate homogenization and RNA extraction; method B: organic solvent based RNA isolation, and method C: organic solvent based RNA isolation followed by purification.