qRTPCR internal (house keeping) control for microRNA

Question

[rob.costa1234]

I want to study expression of microRNA in human cells and wonder what would be the internal controls for normalization of such data. Can I use b-actin or other regular house keeping genes as internal normalization?

Thanks

[VHahaut]

Hi!

It is not the best control to use since you can't pre-process it like the microRNAs. Instead, you should test a few small stable RNAs like the one from the spliceasome (U6 is a classical), ribosomal RNA (5S RNA) or even some tRNA or stable miR instead.