Identification of ciliated sensory neuron-expressed genes in Caenorhabditis elegans using targeted pull-down of poly(A) tails

Hirofumi Kunitomo¹ , Hiroko Uesugi² , Yuji Kohara² and Yuichi Iino¹

¹Molecular Genetics Research Laboratory, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan

²Genome Biology Laboratory, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima 411-8540, Japan

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2005, 6:R17doi:10.1186/gb-2005-6-2-r17


Published:	31 January 2005

Subject areas: Genome studies, Molecular biology, Methods, Neurobiology

Abstract

It is not always easy to apply microarray technology to small numbers of cells because of the difficulty in selectively isolating mRNA from such cells. We report here the preparation of mRNA from ciliated sensory neurons of Caenorhabditis elegans using the mRNA-tagging method, in which poly(A) RNA was co-immunoprecipitated with an epitope-tagged poly(A)-binding protein specifically expressed in sensory neurons. Subsequent cDNA microarray analyses led to the identification of a panel of sensory neuron-expressed genes.