AbstractGene expression is the most fundamental level at which the genotype leads to the phenotype of the organism. Enabled by ultra-high-throughput next-generation DNA sequencing, RNA-Seq involves shotgun sequencing of fragmented RNA transcripts by next-generation sequencing followed by in silico assembly, and is rapidly becoming the most popular method for gene expression analysis. Poly[A]+ RNA-Seq analyses of normal human adult tissue samples such as Illumina’s Human BodyMap 2.0 Project and the RNA-Seq atlas have provided a useful global resource and framework for comparisons with diseased tissues such as cancer. However, these analyses have failed to provide information on poly[A]−RNA, which is abundant in our cells. The most recent advances in RNA-Seq analyses use ribosomal RNA-depletion to provide information on both poly[A]+ and poly[A]−RNA. In this paper, we describe the use of Illumina’s HiSeq 2000 to generate high quality rRNA-depleted RNA-Seq datasets from human fetal and adult tissues. The datasets reported here will be useful in understanding the different expression profiles in different tissues.