What is an endogenous control / Housekeeping gene – and do I need one?
When carrying out an rtPCR expression study it is very important to standardise data for variations in the extraction / conversion and running of the samples. The way this carried out is through the use of an endogenous or housekeeping gene this will be a gene that has a fixed expression level that is unaffected by the experiment you are running. Without this control your data could be meaningless. Many researchers choose to run several control genes as an additional insurance.
