5'RACE-PCR for mRNA Isolation and Quantification

5’RACE-PCR was performed as previously described [37 (link)]. In brief, RNA was isolated with RNeasy mini/midi kit (Qiagen) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Poly(A) containing RNA was purified from 500 μg of total RNA by affinity purification with biotinylated oligo-dT using PolyATtract mRNA Isolation Systems (Promega). 5’RACE PCR was performed using SMARTer 5’/3’ RACE (Clontech) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. PCR products were then run on 1% agarose gel, purified and cloned into pGEM-T Easy vector (Promega) and subsequently sequenced. Reverse transcription reaction for 5’RACE and qRT-PCR was performed using Superscript III Reverse Transcriptase (Invitrogen) using RNA extracted from 3 independent colonies. For qRT-PCR, transcript levels were normalized over gDNA to take into account differences in copy number between plasmids and normalized relative to act1⁺.