One advantage of Northern blotting is the ease with which comparative analyses can be carried out, as researchers can run RNA samples representing different developmental time points, tissues, or organisms on a single gel. Therefore, a single blot can provide information about the developmental time course of gene expression in a particular organism or tissue, or it can allow for comparisons among tissues in one organism or between tissues of multiple organisms. Thus, Northern blot analysis can be used to address a variety of questions involving gene expression.
This technique offers a number of advantages over both RPA and microarray analyses. It is relatively fast and easy, requires no special equipment or kits, and produces a wealth of both qualitative and quantitative data. Besides transcript abundance (which all three methods can detect), Northern blots can also detect the length of a specific transcript, the presence and relative abundance of splice ...
