Bioinformatics Breakthrough: High Quality Transcriptome from as Few as Fifty Cells
Date: 28.10.2013
Bioengineers from the University of California, San Diego have created a new method for analyzing RNA transcripts from samples of 50 to 100 cells.
The approach could be used to develop inexpensive and rapid methods for diagnosing cancers at early stages, as well as better tools for forensics, drug discovery and developmental biology.
The protocols, which were published in April 2013 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, are now being applied to a wide range of biological and medical research questions from brain cancer, to liver function and stem cell biology.
The approach from the UC San Diego bioengineers is called Designed Primer-based RNA sequencing or "DP-seq." It's a new tool for generating comprehensive snapshots of RNA -- the "transcriptome" -- collected from as little as 50 picograms of RNA. Analysis of the transcriptome provides insights into what biological processes are occurring at a specific moment in time. RNA transcripts serve as a proxy for which genes are being expressed and at what levels.
