RNA stability and its role in human diseases

Question 1

How is mRNA measured?

Answer 1

• Low-throughput approaches
• High-throughput transcriptomic approaches

Question 2

How is RNA degradation measured?

Answer 2

• Global transcription arrest, by adding transcriptional inhibitors
• Extraction of RNA
• Quantification of degradation (by deep sequencing or DNA microarray)

Question 3

What is a particularity of RNA-seq?

Answer 3

• It yields a considerable number of intronic reads
• Intronic and exonic reads reflect pre-mRNA and mature mRNA abundance

Question 4

How can differential stability be estimated?

Answer 4

It can be estimated from pre-mRNA and mRNA concentrations
* pre-mRNA: level of transcriptional activity of a gene
* mature mRNA: how much of the transcript was successfully processed

Question 5

What does RBFOX1 do?

Answer 5

It regulates mRNA stability of autism genes

Question 6

Describe

RNA sequencing

Answer 6

• RNA extraction
• Convert RNA to cDNA with adapters
• Fragment cDNA
• Use high-throughput sequencing technologies to determine sequence of cDNA fragments