Human donor tissue is limited, and there are often difficulties in establishing proper control groups. For accurate transcriptome analysis in postmortem tissue, it is essential to obtain high quality from established brain banks such as the New South Wales Tissue Resource Centre at The University of Sydney, Australia (Sutherland et al., 2014; Sutherland et al., 2016). There are several antemortem and postmortem factors that can degrade RNA quality and potentially affect the transcriptome profile of interest (Harrison et al., 1995; Lipska et al., 2006; Stan et al., 2006; Tomita et al., 2004). These variables include, but are not limited to the following: postmortem interval, tissue pH, agonal state, and tissue origin. The factors affecting RNA quality and transcript levels in postmortem brain samples have been intensively studied (Harrison et al., 1995; Lipska et al., 2006; Stan et al., 2006; Tomita et al., 2004). Yet, the interplay of RNA abundance, transcript expression level, etc., is still not well understood, and the variables that are most predictive of RNA quality and transcript abundance are highly contested.
