2019-09-15 by Quick Biology Inc.
Extracellular RNA (exRNA) are the RNA species presented outside of the cells. It is a group of several types of RNAs having diverse functions. ExRNA is protected from RNase as it is carried within extracellular vesicles, lipoproteins or protein complexes can be found in biological fluids such as blood, breast milk, or vaginal fluid.
Liquid biopsy is a rapid in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) due to its accessibility. Blood is its main material. In recent PNAS, Zhou and his colleagues developed SILVER-seq (Small Input Liquid Volume Extracellular RNA Sequencing) (Figure 1, ref1), explored exRNA as candidate targets for IVD development. The authors claim that only 5 µL to 7 µL (less than a finger prick) of serum can yield good exRNA NGS data. By analyzing 150 serum exRNA data using SILVER-seq, they found exRNAs show significant difference of expression between cancer and non-cancer individuals (Figure 2), these data suggest the potential of using exRNAs in serum for liquid biopsy-based diagnostics.
Figure 1: Flowchart of SILVER-seq pipeline. UMI: Unique molecular identifiers (Ref1)
Figure 2: Expression levels of five genes’ exRNA in cancer (red) and normal serum (Blue). (Ref1)
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Reference:
- 1. Zhou, Z. et al. Extracellular RNA in a single droplet of human serum reflects physiologic and disease states. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 201908252 (2019). doi:10.1073/pnas.1908252116