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Reverse-transcription of UV-damaged RNA - (Jan/28/2010 )

Hi all,

We have to UV-crosslink RNA in our procedure a few steps prior to cloning, and have found it to be difficult to get much cDNA. Does anyone have any ideas on how to convert UV-damaged RNA into cDNA?

Is there a way to repair/prevent pyrimidine dimers etc. generated by UV? Or is there a robust RT that can jump over damage? I have heard that HIV RT can proceed through RNA lesions (with low fidelity) - are there any commercially available RTs that can handle them? Fidelity (while desirable) is not our prime concern.

-microphobe-

maybe you can try to use random hexamers, as primers, for cDNA synthesis...

microphobe on Jan 28 2010, 01:35 AM said:

Hi all,

We have to UV-crosslink RNA in our procedure a few steps prior to cloning, and have found it to be difficult to get much cDNA. Does anyone have any ideas on how to convert UV-damaged RNA into cDNA?

Is there a way to repair/prevent pyrimidine dimers etc. generated by UV? Or is there a robust RT that can jump over damage? I have heard that HIV RT can proceed through RNA lesions (with low fidelity) - are there any commercially available RTs that can handle them? Fidelity (while desirable) is not our prime concern.

-susanna-


maybe you can try to use random hexamers, as primers, for cDNA synthesis...

Depends on the RNA sample - for pure mRNA it may be a way to go for, but when you have total RNA, the random hexamer primers would attach to all RNA molecules, including all the rRNA stuff

-array75-

depends what you want to do with the RNA. If you want to do qPCR, microarray, ....? if so, this would not be a problem

-susanna-