poly A mRNA in bacteria?

[Austin So (Hae Jin)]

David Alexander" wrote:

> I am curious to know if there are examples of bacteria that poly
> adenylate their mRNA.
> I've heard that mycobacteria do this - any others?

Most bacteria do produce some level (maybe "almost none" is maybe more
appropriate) of polyA mRNA, though the length of the polyA tail (10-100?
I don't know why that number comes to mind) is very small compared to
eukaryotes (200-400). This has only recently been determined (like within
the last 2 years).

> Without handy polyA tails, separation of mRNA, and generation of cDNA
> is difficult. Is there a method/enzyme that will reliably add polyA
> to bacterial RNA?

Yep.

Amara and Vijaya (1997) Specific polyadenylation and purification of
total messenger RNA from Escherichia coli. Nucl. Acids Res. 25(17),
3465-3470.

--
---
Austin P. So (Hae Jin)

I.I.S.G.P.
Biotechnology Laboratory
University of British Columbia

E-mail: haejin at netinfo.ubc.ca

http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/haejin/index.html (under construction)