Ambion’s FirstChoice Human Brain Reference RNA is a high quality standard for human microarray analysis, pooled from multiple donors and several brain regions, thus ensuring unbiased coverage. The Reference RNA passes the stringent QC criteria for purity and integrity that distinguishes all of Ambion’s FirstChoice RNA offerings and is the same RNA (identical manufacturing lot) used for the MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC) project.

For more information about the MAQC project, please visit:
www.fda.gov/nctr/science/centers/toxicoinformatics/maqc

From the FDA website:

"The MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC) project involves six FDA Centers, major providers of microarray platforms and RNA samples, EPA, NIST, academic laboratories, and other stakeholders. The MAQC project aims to establish QC metrics and thresholds for objectively assessing the performance achievable by various microarray platforms and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of various data analysis methods. Two RNA samples will be selected for three species, human, rat, and mouse, and differential gene expression levels between the two samples will be calibrated with microarrays and other technologies (e.g., QRT-PCR). The resulting microarray datasets will be used for assessing the precision and cross-platform/laboratory comparability of microarrays, and the QRT-PCR datasets will enable evaluation of the nature and magnitude of any systematic biases that may exist between microarrays and QRT-PCR. The availability of the calibrated RNA samples combined with the resulting microarray and QRT-PCR datasets, which will be made readily accessible to the microarray community, will allow individual laboratories to more easily identify and correct procedural failures."

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