Identification of Ribosomal Footprints on the Electrophoretic Gel in Translatome Profiling: on the Use of DNA Size Standards

Abstract

The commercial DNA ladder was tested as a substitute for RNA size standards to identify ribosomal footprints (RNA fragments of about 30 nucleotides long) on an electrophoretic polyacrylamide gel for the purposes of translatome profiling. It has been found that 25 and 35 nucleotides long synthetic RNA oligonucleotides do migrate slower than the synthetic DNA oligonucleotides of the matching length and sequences and their positions on the gel coincide with those of 30 and 40 nucleotides long DNA oligonucleotides, correspondingly, of the commercial IDT 20/100 DNA oligo length standards. By using this DNA ladder and RNA isolated from the preparation enriched in ribosomes (obtained by fractionating on MicroSpin S-400 columns the HepG2 cell lysate treated with RNase I), the position of a band of putative ribosomal footprints can be identified on a gel that has been verified by measuring in an RNA-seq experiment the length of RNA fragments extracted from the band.