Hello!
I have a small RNA-seq analysis from leaves, and I will validate the known and the novel miRNAs by qPCR. My question is how I should present the qPCR results from a single sample (leaves) because, in most studies, researchers tend to compare with other plant organs, treatments, or developmental stages.
Thank you for your help!
Hello Claudia,
I don't work specifically with miRNAs, but whenever i possess only a single sample or replicates, i try to connect my single sample with other experiments or studies that had the same sample/tusse as mine. In your case, i would find other studies that also did qPCR/RNA-Seq on leaves, extract their results and compare to mine, especially if they treated your plant the same way as you did.
I'd try and answer these types of questions:
- How would the expression of the genes on your leaves compare to their (literature) leaves expression on analogous conditions?
- What would be the expected expression for your organism leaves under the condition you applied (based on literature)? Did your plant express those genes?
- On the genes you found differentially expressed, are they well studied for your organism? And for plants at large?
- Are there any factors that would cause your genes to be differentially expressed based on the literature?
Regards,
Claudia Gutierrez
Comparison with the literature should be done in any case if you have many samples or single samples. There must be scientific references, unless you find something ground breaking and absolute novel.
Nevertheless, your question is a bit different. General expression analysis are done with many samples as you say. So, their aim there is to compare the expression profile between the experimental and control group. In your case, you can't go for comparative study. You have to design your study in "exploratory" manner. But, since you don't have biological replicates to see what you see is actually the results or artifacts. Such studies can be very difficult to defend for publication in a good* journal.
Yes you can compare this data with already cited literature as suggested before
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