What type of RNA internal standards are there for quantitative determination of miRNA?
The most common normalizer options for miRNA quantitation have been U6 snRNA and 5S rRNA. Of course with any qPCR reaction, their consistent expression must be validated beforehand. We typically use traditional housekeeping genes such as GAPDH or B2M for normalization, once we have confirmed expression is similar across the samples being studied. miRNAs or snRNAs can be used but only if it is comfirmed that expression does not change across all of the samples. There is not one universal miRNA or snRNA that can be used in all cases. Sequences we have sued for housekeeping genes are in the table below.
