Fig. 1.

Lack of normalization can lead to the inappropriate conclusions regarding diagnostic assays of urinary extracellular mRNA. A) Artificially generated data to show an idealized illustration of mRNA copy number for target genes (Red) and genes not affected by the disease (Blue) in a healthy individual's urine. B) Artificially generated data illustrating an individual with a pathology which leads to the upregulation of the mRNA of target genes in urine beyond a diagnostic threshold (black line). C) Artificially generated data intended to illustrate an individual with a condition which increases the mRNA levels in urine globally. In this situation, measuring target genes without appropriate normalization could lead to the individual being misclassified as have disease (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article).