accurate expression profiling of very small cell populations准确的表达分析非常小的细胞群.pdfVIP

Accurate Expression Profiling of Very Small Cell Populations 1 ´ 1,2 1 1,3 Eva Gonzalez-Roca , Xabier Garcia-Albeniz , Silvia Rodriguez-Mulero , Roger R. Gomis , Karl 4 1 Kornacker , Herbert Auer * ´ ` 1 Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Barcelona, Spain, 2 Medical Oncology, Hospital Clınic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 3 Institut Catala de Recerca i Estudis Avanc¸ats, Barcelona, Spain, 4 Division of Sensory Biophysics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America Abstract Background: Expression profiling, the measurement of all transcripts of a cell or tissue type, is currently the most comprehensive method to describe their physiological states. Given that accurate profiling methods currently available require RNA amounts found in thousands to millions of cells, many fields of biology working with specialized cell types cannot use these techniques because available cell numbers are limited. Currently available alternative methods for expression profiling from nanograms of RNA or from very small cell populations lack a broad validation of results to provide accurate information about the measured transcripts. Methods and Findings: We provide evidence that currently available methods for expression profiling of very small cell populations are prone to technical noise and therefore cannot be used efficiently as discovery tools. Furthermore, we present Pico Profiling, a new expr