Quality control of genomic DNA for The French Kidney Disease Study by the Biobanque de Picardie

The French Chronic Kidney Disease – Renal Epidemiology and Information Network (CKD-REIN) project is a prospective cohort study that was established to identify the determinants, biomarkers, and practice patterns associated with chronic kidney disease outcomes. Whole blood samples of the cohort study were processed into buffy coats followed by genomic DNA (gDNA) extraction and quality control (QC) by the Biobanque de Picardie.

In this application note, Agilent Technologies demonstrates the use of the Agilent 4200 TapeStation system and the Genomic DNA ScreenTape assay as an optimal QC tool to monitor the integrity of gDNA extracted from buffy coats stored frozen for up to five years. The note also describes how the objective quality metric of the TapeStation system, the DNA integrity number (DIN), was applied to evaluate the impact of a delay in blood processing on gDNA quality. The QC steps with the DIN quality metric allowed the Biobanque de Picardie to confirm the stability of the biospecimen processing workflow and verify that all the CKD-REIN samples were high quality and suitable for genome-wide association studies.