A novel experimental approach for systematic identification of box H/ACA snoRNAs from eukaryotes

Box H/ACA snoRNAs represent an abundant group of small non-coding RNAs mainly involved in the pseudouridylation of rRNAs and/or snRNAs in eukaryotes and Archaea. In this study, we describe a novel experimental method for systematic identification of box H/ACA snoRNAs from eukaryotes. In the specialized cDNA libraries constructed by this method with total cellular RNAs from human blood cells, the high efficiency of cloning for diverse box H/ACA snoRNAs was achieved and seven novel species of this snoRNA family were identified from human for the first time. Furthermore, the novel method has been successfully applied for the identification of the box H/ACA snoRNAs from Drosophila and the fission yeast, demonstrating a powerful ability for systematic analysis of box H/ACA snoRNAs in a broad spectrum of eukaryotes.