In a subset of human samples, carrier poly(rA) RNA and host rRNA were
depleted from RNA samples using RNase H selective depletion9 (link),33 (link). In brief, oligo d(T) (40 nt long) and/or DNA probes
complementary to human rRNA were hybridized to the sample RNA. The sample was
then treated with 15 units Hybridase (Epicentre) for 30 min at 45 °C.
The complementary DNA probes were removed by treating each reaction with an
RNase-free DNase (Qiagen) according to the manufacturer’s protocol.
Following depletion, samples were purified using 1.8× volume AMPure
RNAclean beads (Beckman Coulter Genomics) and eluted into 10 µ l water
for cDNA synthesis.