Most digitalMLPA experiments require inclusion of dedicated reference samples. For some applications in which aberrations are rare, separate reference samples may not always be required. Details can be found in the application-specific product documentation.

The minimum number of samples required in a digitalMLPA experiment without dedicated reference samples needs to be determined experimentally because it depends on the application, the experimental conditions, the quality of the samples, and experimental reproducibility. When too little samples are included in the experiment, this can result in warnings for one of the reference sample quality (RSQ) scores. Read more about RSQ scores. Therefore, including more samples reduces the chance of these kinds of warnings.