Bacterial RNA-Detecting Enzyme for Liquid Biopsies
Improving the accuracy of liquid biopsy has enormous potential for making cancers more manageable. And to that end, biochemists at the University of Texas at Austin have found that a bacterial enzyme (of a group of enzymes known as thermostable group II intron reverse transcriptases) are much more efficient in determining a cell’s health state. “TGIRTs find strands of RNA and create complementary strands of DNA that encode the same information and can be rapidly sequenced to provide diagnostic information. Because they are able to accurately make DNA copies of almost any type of RNA from very small amounts of starting material, they would do a better job of catching biomarkers for disease than anything currently available in an RNA-based liquid biopsy. . . .” MORE
Image Credit: Jennifer Stamos/Univ. of Texas at Austin