miR-309-dependent unstable maternal mRNAs are stabilized in smaug mutants

The behavior of 410 miR-309-dependent maternal mRNAs (from Bushati et al., 2008) in embryos from wild type and smg-mutant females relative to wild-type stage 14 oocyte reference RNA. All are unstable in wild-type while almost 85% are stabilized in smg mutants mRNA was extracted from staged embryos as well as stage 14 oocytes as described previously (Tadros et al., 2007a). To assay mRNA quality, known stable (rpA1) and unstable (Hsp83) transcripts were probed on Northern blots. Total RNA was then reverse transcribed with random primers (Tadros et al., 2007a) and labeled asÊdescribed in the Indirect Labeling of Total RNA for Microarray Hybridization protocol at http://www.flyarrays.com. The fluorescently labeled cDNA probes were hybridized to 14Kv1 microarrays obtained from the Canadian Drosophila Microarray Centre (http://www.flyarrays.com; GPL3603: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GPL3603). Hybridization and scanning were performed using a PerkinElmer/GSI ScanArray 4000 scanner and the ScanArray software as previously described (Neal et al., 2003). The 16 bit TIFF image files were quantified using QuantArray Version 3 (PerkinElmer), using the adaptive quantification algorithm and analyzed using GeneTraffic Duo3.2 (Iobion Informatics/Stratagene). . The 14Kv1 arrays were normalized to a set of known stable transcripts: Rpl1, RpL32, Rps5a, Rps3, RpL22, mRpS30, mRpS22, CG6764, bonsai, RpS29, RpL11, mRpL1, CG6764, CG317, RpL37A, and RpL40.