Comparison of contemporary methods[23][24][3] RNA-Seq Microarray Throughput 1 day to 1 week per experiment[10] 1–2 days per experiment[10] Input RNA amount Low ~ 1 ng total RNA[4] High ~ 1 μg mRNA[26] Labour intensity High (sample preparation and data analysis)[10][23] Low[10][23] Prior knowledge None required, although a reference genome/transcriptome sequence is useful[23] Reference genome/transcriptome is required for design of probes[23] Quantitation accuracy ~90% (limited by sequence coverage)[27] >90% (limited by fluorescence detection accuracy)[27] Sequence resolution RNA-Seq can detect SNPs and splice variants (limited by sequencing accuracy of ~99%)[27] Specialised arrays can detect mRNA splice variants (limited by probe design and cross-hybridisation)[27] Sensitivity 1 transcript per million (approximate, limited by sequence coverage)[27] 1 transcript per thousand (approximate, limited by fluorescence detection)[27] Dynamic range 100,000:1 (limited by sequence coverage)[28] 1,000:1 (limited by fluorescence saturation)[28] Technical reproducibility >99%[29][30] >99%[31][32]