Bioo Scientific Releases the MiraMas™ Kit for qPCR Analysis of microRNA and Other Small RNAs

The MiraMas™ Kit from Bioo Scientific uses a novel approach for SYBR Green/qPCR-based profiling of microRNAs and other small RNAs. MicroRNAs are the subject of intense research focus due to the pivotal role they play in essentially all important biological processes and because of their potential to serve as cancer biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

According to Dr. Marianna Goldrick, Senior Scientist at Bioo Scientific, “The MiraMas Kit overcomes the limitations of other kits for qPCR analysis of microRNA, in that it allows many more samples to be processed per kit and allows large panels of miRNA targets to be analyzed from each reverse transcription reaction. Another distinctive feature of the MiraMas Kit is that it includes control RNAs from liver and brain, as well as control Forward primers targeting tissue-specific and constitutively expressed microRNAs.”

The MiraMas Kit uses a convenient one tube protocol to convert all of the microRNAs in a sample into cDNA, while offering researchers great flexibility in terms of sample size and number of reactions performed. Using a highly efficient, proprietary 3’ ligation strategy, the MiraMas Kit allows researchers to produce cDNA libraries from up to 150 total or small RNA enriched samples per kit. Input amounts of RNA ranging from approximately 10 ng to several micrograms can be used for library construction.

Using higher input amounts of RNA, hundreds of microRNA targets can be screened in up to 30 samples per kit. Using lower input amounts of RNAs allows more samples to be processed and screened for a smaller number of microRNA targets per sample. The microRNA targets are amplified using microRNA-specific Forward primers and the Universal Reverse primer included in the kit. Forward primers are designed using a simple algorithm that does not require modified nucleotides. Since modified nucleotides and special purification is not required, the cost for the microRNA-specific primers is minimal. Sequences of Forward primers for microRNAs may be obtained at no cost from Bioo Scientific. An alternative primer design algorithm is available which can be used to distinguish between closely related microRNAs.