Recently I was thinking about my RNA project and wishing that I could express RNA in bacteria as is typically done for recombinant proteins. I looked at the July issue of Nature Methods to see a paper describing exactly the technology I was imagining. The authors created plasmids which allow the fusion of a target RNA sequence to a tRNA scaffold which is authenically processed by the cellular machinery and protected from degradation by the intrinsic stability of the tRNA. The potential benefits of this technology for NMR of RNA are:

1. low cost expression of uniformly-labeled RNA
2. the tRNA scaffold acts to stabilize the target RNA
3. the RNA structure may be preserved during purification
4. affinity purification of RNA

Their is also an informative “news and views” piece discussing the work presented. Looking back over their previous work it is clear that the authors have worked on this technology for quite some time. Publication in this highly visible forum will hopefully give the technique exposure which will encourage further developments.

As for me, I am already ordering primers to use this new technology! Please post to the forum if you have any comments or questions.