The general steps to prepare a complementary DNA (cDNA) library for sequencing are described below, but often vary between platforms.
# RNA Isolation: RNA is isolated from tissue and mixed with Deoxyribonuclease (DNase). DNase reduces the amount of genomic DNA. The amount of RNA degradation is checked with gel and capillary electrophoresis and is used to assign an RNA integrity number to the sample. This RNA quality and the total amount of starting RNA are taken into consideration during the subsequent library preparation, sequencing, and analysis steps.
#RNA selection/depletion: To analyze signals of interest, the isolated RNA can either be kept as is, enriched for RNA with 3 polyadenylated (poly(A)) tails to include only eukaryotic mRNA, depleted of ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and/or filtered for RNA that binds specific sequences (RNA selection and depletion methods table, below). RNA molecules having 3 poly(A) tails in eukaryotes are mainly composed of mature, processed, coding sequences. Poly(A) selection is performed by mixing RNA with  oligomers covalently attached to a substrate, typically magnetic beads. Poly(A) selection has important limitations in RNA biotype detection. Many RNA biotypes are not polyadenylated, including many noncoding RNA and histone-core protein transcripts, or are regulated via their poly(A) tail length (e.g., cytokines) and thus might not be detected after poly(A) selection. Furthermore, poly(A) selection may display increased 3' bias, especially with lower quality RNA. These limitations can be avoided with ribosomal depletion, removing rRNA that typically represents over 90% of the RNA in a cell. Both poly(A) enrichment and ribosomal depletion steps are labor intensive and could introduce biases, so more simple approaches have been developed to omit these steps. Small RNA targets, such as miRNA, can be further isolated through size selection with exclusion gels, magnetic beads, or commercial kits.
#cDNA synthesis: RNA is reverse transcribed to cDNA because DNA is more stable and to allow for amplification (which uses DNA polymerases) and leverage more mature DNA sequencing technology. Amplification subsequent to reverse transcription results in loss of strandedness, which can be avoided with chemical labeling or single molecule sequencing. Fragmentation and size selection are performed to purify sequences that are the appropriate length for the sequencing machine. The RNA, cDNA, or both are fragmented with enzymes, sonication, or nebulizers. Fragmentation of the RNA reduces 5 bias of randomly primed-reverse transcription and the influence of primer binding sites, with the downside that the 5 and 3' ends are converted to DNA less efficiently. Fragmentation is followed by size selection, where either small sequences are removed or a tight range of sequence lengths are selected. Because small RNAs like miRNAs are lost, these are analyzed independently. The cDNA for each experiment can be indexed with a hexamer or octamer barcode, so that these experiments can be pooled into a single lane for multiplexed sequencing.