Patent ID: 7504209

Claim:
A method for integrated ribonucleic acid integrity assessment and analysis comprising the steps of: (a) providing a support having thereon a set of immobilized detector probes and a set of at least two control probes, wherein (i) a first of said at least two control probes is complementary to 23S rRNA or its functional equivalent, or 28S rRNA or its functionally equivalent, and (ii) a second of said at least two control probes is complementary to 16S rRNA or its functional equivalent, or 18S rRNA or its functionally equivalent; wherein said first and second control probes represent the two major rRNAs of the organism wherefrom a sample is extracted and allow the assessment of integrity of said sample; (b) contacting said support with analyte ribonucleic acids derived from a sample, under conditions allowing hybridization of complementary analyte ribonucleic acids and immobilized probes to form analyte ribonucleic acid/probe complexes; wherein said hybridization generates a detectable signal; (c) detecting signals generated by said complexes; (d) determining the ratio of signals generated by the 28S rRNA/control probe and 18S rRNA/control probe or the 23S rRNA/control probe and 16S rRNA/control probe or functionally equivalent rRNA/control probe complexes; (e) assessing the integrity of said sample; and (f) evaluating microarray analysis results in view of said integrity assessment.