The new method of preparing RNA for sequencing

Team lead by Dr Maria Górna from the Faculty of Chemistry, Warsaw University and Dr. Habil. Agata Starosta from the IBB PAS developed a new method of preparing RNA for high- throughput sequencing, which will facilitate the study of gene expression for many species of fungi, plants and eukaryotic microorganisms.
Dr Górna’s method involves the capturing and enriching the coding RNA by binding (of the IFIT1 protein immobilized on the resin) to the cap group at the 5 ‘end of the RNA – the so-called cap 0, which is present only
at the ends of the mRNA.

The analysis of the RNA enriched in this way was carried out by the Laboratory of Translatomics IBB PAS under the supervision of Prof. Agata Starosta and proved that the new method successfully replaces commercial kits used for the preparation of mRNA samples. In addition, Dr Agnieszka Tudek from the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Rafał Tomecki from the Faculty of Biology, the University of Warsaw, showed that the previously known method based on another cap-binding protein is not suitable for yeast RNA samples.

This work was supported – among others – by the LIDER grant from the National Centre for Research and Development, Poland, First Team from Foundation for Polish Science and the EMBO Installation Grant.
Martyna Nowacka+, Przemysław Latoch+, Matylda A Izert, Natalia K Karolak, Rafal Tomecki, Michał Koper, Agnieszka Tudek, Agata L Starosta*, Maria W Górna*, A cap 0-dependent mRNA capture method to analyze the yeast transcriptome, Nucleic Acids Research, 2022;, gkac903, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkac903

Graphics: The new method for mRNA enrichment based on the capture of Cap 0 groups on IFIT1 protein immobilized on a resin.
Authors: Prof. Agata Starosta and Przemysław Latoch.