Clostridium ljungdahlii DSM 13528 is a promising platform organism for biofuel production from syngas. Gene expression analysis permits a better understanding of the important molecular biological characteristics of this organism, such as carbon fixation and solvent adaptation. Normalization is a prerequisite for accurate gene expression analysis, but until now, no valid reference genes have been proposed for quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis of C. ljungdahlii DSM 13528. In this study, seven candidate reference genes (gyrA, rho, fotl, rpoA, gukI, recA, 165 rRNA) were selected for qRT-PCR quantification of their expression levels in various culture conditions that corresponded to different carbon sources and stresses. Two analytical programs, geNorm and NormFinder, were used to evaluate reference gene stability. The results showed that gyrA, rho and fotl exhibited the most stable expression levels across all tested samples and can be confidently used as reference genes to normalize the transcriptional data of target genes in qRT-PCR analyses of C. ljungdahlii DSM 13528. This study presents the first attempt to explore the validity of candidate reference genes and provide a set of valid reference genes for normalizing C. ljungdahlii DSM 13528 target gene expression and transcriptome analysis. (C) 2013, The Society for Biotechnology, Japan. All rights reserved.