Measurement of genome-wide RNA synthesis and decay rates with Dynamic Transcriptome Analysis (DTA)

Abstract

Standard transcriptomics measures total cellular RNA levels. Our understanding of gene regulation would be greatly improved if we could measure RNA synthesis and decay rates on a genome-wide level. To that end, the Dynamic Transcriptome Analysis (DTA) method has been developed. DTA combines metabolic RNA labeling with standard transcriptomics to measure RNA synthesis and decay rates in a precise and non-perturbing manner. Here, we present the open source R/Bioconductor software package DTA. It implements all required bioinformatics steps that allow the accurate absolute quantification and comparison of RNA turnover.