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Updated: Jun 23, 2025

Real-time Imaging of Single Engineered RNA Transcripts in Living Cells Using Ratiometric Bimolecular Beacons
Published on: August 6, 2014
Single-Cell Imaging of mRNA by Target RNA-Initiated RCA
Xiaojun Ren1, Yifan Wu1, Ruijie Deng2
1Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Life Science, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
We present a powerful method for direct mRNA detection based on ligation-based recognition and in situ amplification, capable of single-cell imaging mRNA at single-nucleotide and single-molecule resolution. Attributed to the use of Splint R ligase that can ligate padlock probe with RNA as target template, this method can efficiently detect mRNA in the absence of reverse transcription. This method enables spatial localization and correlation analysis of gene expression in single cells, which helps us to elucidate gene function and regulatory mechanisms.
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