RNA (ribonucleic acid), which is made up of ribonucleotides, is a molecule found in all living organisms. RNA is thought to have probably preceded DNA in primordial life billions of years ago. RNA was eventually replaced by DNA as a chemically more stable carrier of genetic information.
In mitochondrial diseases, genetic diseases caused by mutations compromising mitochondrial functions, the biosynthesis of all nucleotides potentially declines. However, little is known about how much, in which tissues, and with what consequences. This knowledge gap is partly because of the lack of suitable methods to measure ribonucleotides in a typical research laboratory without special chromatography equipment.
Now, researchers have developed the first technique that allows easy measurement of all 12 ribonucleotides from small tissue and cell samples without specialized equipment.
The study was carried out by the research group led by docent Jukka Kallijärvi at the Folkhälsan Research Center and at the University of Helsinki in Stem Cells and Metabolism Research Program.
Read the whole news story at Folkhälsan Research Center’s website.
Article: Janne Purhonen, Anders Hofer and Jukka Kallijärvi. Quantification of all 12 canonical ribonucleotides by real-time fluorogenic in vitro transcription. Nucleic Acids Research 2023. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkad1091