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Primer extension

This is a method used to figure out how far upstream from a fixed site the start of an mRNA is. For example, perhaps you have isolated a cDNA clone, but you don't think that the clone has all of the 5' untranslated region. To find out how much is missing, you would first sequence the part you have, and figure out which strand is coding strand (usually the coding strand will have a large open reading frame). Next, you ask the DNA Synthesis Facility to make an Oligonucleotide complementary to the 5'-most region of the coding strand (and thus complementary to the mRNA). This "primer" is hybridized to mRNA (say, a mixture of mRNA containing the one in which you are interested), and reverse transcriptase is added to copy the mRNA from the primer out to the 5' end. The size of the resulting DNA fragment shows how far away from the 5' end your primer is.


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