Every sample donated by participants for research is invaluable and irreplaceable. Multi-omic strategies rely on data generation from multiple components of biological samples at single timepoints maximising the participant’s donation. Extracting every useful and useable component from whole blood samples enables system genomics analyses and generates deep phenotyping of clinical and disease traits. The Human Studies Unit has developed specific and cost effective methodology to generate a biological resource that can provide multiple omic data types, specifically both genetic and expression data from a single blood collection.
PAXgene tubes specifically used to stabilise the whole genome RNA expression profile are expensive and where recruitment rates are low, run the risk of expiry prior to use. Here we describe a method to generate whole genome expression data and genome-wide genetic data from a single 10mL EDTA collection tube. Validation of this technique has shown that RNA seq data generated via this method is highly concordant with data collected via PAXgene tubes for the same individuals at the same time point. Implementation of this protocol sees the collection of a blood sample for RNA expression profiling drop from ~$18 / sample to $3.50. The ability to maximise every component of a blood sample to generate system genomics data creates valuable sample collections and enables downstream use of samples as technologies evolve.