miRNA profiling of H1 ES cells in neural induction timecourse

H1 ES cells were differentiated using a neural induction protocol. Biological triplicate samples were collected at five timepoints (d0, d3, d6, d9, d12) and analyzed by miRNA microarrays. The goal of this experiment was to identify potential biases in Drosha processing of miRNAs dependent on biophysical properties and to identify differentially expressed miRNAs over the course of differentiation/neural induction. Using a robust differentiation protocol (described in the associated publication), H1 ES cells underwent differentiation/neural induction for 12 days. Samples were collected in biological triplicate every three days, beginning with day 0 and ending at day 12 for a total of five timpoints and fifteen samples. Total RNA was purified using the Qiagen miRNeasy Mini kit according to the manufacturer and submitted to LC Sciences according to their specifications. Raw data were received and were Lowess-normalized to allow cross-chip comparisons.