Fig. 1.

Panel A: experimental layout. Sections of rat brain were either snap frozen or heat stabilized using the stabilizor T1. The heat stabilized samples were then either directly snap frozen or further incubated for 12 h at room temperature to determine stabilizing effect on RNA by heat stabilization. The samples were collected in duplicates to enable comparative extraction with two extraction protocols, either directly with QiaZol or with a pre-solubilization step with 8 M urea prior to QiaZol extraction. Each sample group consisted of four biological replicates, N = 4. Panel B: schematics of qPCR based RNA quality scoring. Two overlapping qPCR reactions, one short and one long, is amplified from the same cDNA. The difference in Ct between the long and the short will depend on cDNA fragmentation and becomes an indicator of RNA quality.