5'-RACE PCR - (Apr/13/2007 )

Hi everyone,

I am working with 5'-RACE. Basically I isolate total RNA from tissue, synthesis cDNA then use cDNA as template to perform 5'-RACE PCR. Could anyone please tell me if 5'-RACE PCR product sequence contains both intron and exon, or exon only? Thanks a lot for your time.

Lily

The basic idea of mRNA is that it only consists of the coding sequence information. The definition of exons and introns is derived from that - exons are those parts of a gene that can be found in cDNA also. So, to answer your question, cDNA contains only the sequence of exons of the gene. However, you may find intronic sequence also, which makes it probable that there are more exons in the gene than already known (i.e. alternative splicing).
Hope that helps,
Krümel

Thank you very much for your helpful information!