Although the RIN number can provide general information about the extent of sample fragmentation, it is not sensitive or predictable enough to be a useful indicator of downstream performance, especially for RNA-Seq. Very often, RIN numbers for FFPE-derived RNA will be between 2 and 3. Some of these samples will be useful for RNA-Seq, and others won’t – the RIN will not tell you, however.
A slightly better predictor of performance in RNA-Seq using Illumina sequencing is the DV200, which represents the percentage of RNA fragments longer than 200 nucleotides. The DV200 is also calculated based on Bioanalyzer data, but suffers from the same drawbacks as all Bioanalyzer-based methods, specifically high variability.
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