Determining miRNA Expression Patterns in Xenopus

Whole-mount in situ hybridization (WISH) is a technique that enables temporal and spatial visualization of RNA molecules in an embryo or whole tissue by using a complementary labelled probe. MicroRNAs are short noncoding RNAs of 20-25 nt in length mainly involved in posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression. In this chapter, we describe how to visualize miRNAs in Xenopus laevis or tropicalis by WISH using two different approaches: LNA-WISH to visualize mature miRNAs and pri-miRNA-WISH to visualize the immature form of miRNAs, the pri-miRNAs.