How to express a rare microRNA - (Apr/19/2011 )

Hi all,

I would be grateful if anyone could help me. I am trying to determine the expression pattern of a microRNA believed to be expressed at low levels in whole mount embryos. I have designed an RNA probe against the pri-miR and have done several in-situs using alkaline phosphatase. Although I always get staining, more often than not this is all washed out when I add ethanol in the final step before mounting. However the colour remained in the first and penultimate times I did the in-situ. At first I thought it might be that the amount of ethanol added is critical and that it had to greatly exceeed by many times the amount of residual PBT. However, I made sure of this the last time I did it but the colour still washed out. Does anyone have any clues as to how I can prevent this?

I have also thought about expressing the mature miR. The only system I have read about is the LNA probes by Exiqon, which are quite expensive. Does anyone know of other mature miR probes available that are cheaper? Are there any that you would recommend?

Thanks,
miRcat

-miR cat-

have also thought about expressing the mature miR. The only system I have read about is the LNA probes by Exiqon, which are quite expensive. Does anyone know of other mature miR probes available that are cheaper?

Are you talking about expressing the miRNA or cheaper miR probes? I don't have any idea about cheap probe, but if you want to expression the miRNA as a positive control, you can cloning the pre-miR sequence into an expression vector.

-pcrman-