The discovery of small RNA's that have regulatory effects on gene expression has excited researchers to elucidate and characterise the function of these molecules in molecular processes and as possible tools in drug discovery.
The small RNA labelling kit exploits the power of Kreatech's ULS labelling technology, a tool that relies on the special binding properties of transition metals, especially platinum, to form coordinative bonds with biomolecules by binding to specific sites on DNA, RNA and proteins.
In this way, ULS acts as relatively simple "molecular glue," for DNA, RNA and proteins. As a result of its versatility, customers have a choice of the molecular label attached to the ULS they can use to label the biomolecules of interest.
"This kit allows for the labelling of miRNA's and siRNA's, important emerging research tools, where other enzymatic methods have failed," said Brent Keller, general manager of Kreatech USA.
"Additionally, ULS now proves that is truly a "molecular glue" that is independent of fragment length, is platform independent, substrate independent, and will enable the researcher to broaden the scope of their experimental conditions," he added.
One common way to examine these small RNA's, either siRNAs or miRNAs, is to analyse them on a microarray.
Due to their small size, these RNA molecules prove very difficult to label via the enzymatic reactions common to NHS-ester chemistry.
Since the ULS labelling technology it is a non-enzymatic labelling reaction whose labelling efficiency is independent of fragment size, ULS' is at an advantage because it labels small RNA molecules as it does all nucleic acids.
The kit provides users with the reagents necessary to label 20µg of small RNA as well as the specially designed KREApure purification columns.
These columns were developed to specifically remove unreacted ULS reagent from the labelling reaction.
The KREApure columns have no affinity for nucleic acids and for this reason the recovery is extremely high and fragments of all sizes flow through, making it ideal for work with small RNA samples.
This kit offers the ULS labelling molecule bound to leading dyes from GE Healthcare/Amersham (CyDyes),