Counting small RNA in disease-causing organisms
Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - 07:50
in Biology & Nature
Small molecules of RNA (tens to hundreds of nucleotides in length) play a key regulatory role in bacteria. Due to their small size, directly measuring the number of small RNA (sRNA) present in a single bacterium has proven so far to be an impossible task. Standard methods of measuring the number of specific nucleic acid molecules present in a single cell suffer from too much background and false positives when scientists attempt to image short targets. In research featured on the cover of the journal Analytical Chemistry, Los Alamos researchers demonstrated improved technical methods capable of directly counting small RNA molecules in pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria.