RNase P is a human gene present in all nucleated cells and is commonly used as an internal control in PCR-based assays. Its amplification confirms that the sample contains human nucleic acid and that the nucleic acid extraction and PCR steps were successful. Please note that even though RNase P is a gold standard endogenous control for PCR assays, but it is not reliable in urine samples due to their typically low human DNA content. Assays using urine often require additional or alternative controls to ensure accurate validation of negative results (Vogels et al 2020, FDA 2023).
Vogels, C. B. F., Brito, A. F., Wyllie, A. L., Fauver, J. R., Ott, I. M., Kalinich, C. C., Petrone, M. E., Casanovas-Massana, A., Catherine Muenker, M., Moore, A. J., Klein, J., Lu, P., Lu-Culligan, A., Jiang, X., Kim, D. J., Kudo, E., Mao, T., Moriyama, M., Oh, J. E., Park, A., … Grubaugh, N. D. (2020). Analytical sensitivity and efficiency comparisons of SARS-CoV-2 RT-qPCR primer-probe sets. Nature microbiology, 5(10), 1299–1305. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0761-6
Nalla, A. K., Casto, A. M., Huang, M. W., Perchetti, G. A., Sampoleo, R., Shrestha, L., Wei, Y., Zhu, H., Jerome, K. R., & Greninger, A. L. (2020). Comparative Performance of SARS-CoV-2 Detection Assays Using Seven Different Primer-Probe Sets and One Assay Kit https://journals.asm.org/doi/epub/10.1128/jcm.00557-20. Journal of clinical microbiology, 58(6), e00557-20. https://doi.org/10.1128/JCM.00557-20
