Assay for rapid Poly(A) Tail length determination

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of the major underlying factors for the significant broad impact of molecular biology on biomedical research is the generation of effective and highly reproducible assay kits to measure fundamental properties of ge ne expression. One area of molecular biology that is relatively understudied is the role of poly(A) tail length in the regulation of transcript fate and gene expression. Much of this is due to the absence of a highly reproducible means for the average biom edical research lab to assess this property of cellular mRNAs. Current assays have enjoyed varied success among laboratories and many standard molecular biology researchers simply shy away from assessing poly(A) tail length due to the lack of a readily ava ilable approach. The goal of this proposal is to address this need and develop and validate an efficient, highly reproducible approach to assess poly(A) tail length on a mRNA specific basis.