Universal mouse reference RNA derived from neonatal mice.

A reproducible, transcriptionally diverse common reference RNA is required for accurate comparisons of data generated from most spotted microarray experiments in different experiments. Several methods have been proposed to make such a reference RNA, such as pooling RNAs isolated from multiple cell lines or tissues, amplifying pooled RNAs, or synthesizing RNAs or DNAs complementary to microarray features. We report an approach to prepare a large amount of mouse reference RNA from whole neonatal mice. This approach is simple, quick, reliable, reproducible, and inexpensive. The whole mouse reference RNA is highly representative when compared to two commercially available universal mouse reference RNAs isolated and pooled from multiple cell lines or organs.