We have three animal groups including a control (C) and two treatment groups (T1&T2) and we are doing this study to measure the variation of expression of a target gene . We extracted total RNA from each group and performed reverse transcription using a gene specific primer to develop cDNA libraries. Then we performed PCR using cDNA as template and did eletrophoresis. After running gel, we used Image j to compare densiometric results to calculate relative gene expression of the target gene with compared to a reference gene. I would like to know if this semi-quantitative RT-PCR results are still valid for publication? or is it essential to perform gene expression studies using RT-qPCR for validation?