Ago-APP: a GW peptide-based Argonaute affinity capture strategy. Arabidopsis thaliana

During microRNA (miRNA)-guided gene silencing, Argonaute (Ago) proteins interact with a member of the TNRC6/GW protein family. Here we used a short GW protein-derived peptide fused to GST and demonstrate that it binds to Ago proteins with high affinity. This allows for the simultaneous isolation of all Ago protein complexes expressed in diverse species to identify associated proteins, small RNAs or target mRNAs. We refer to our method as Ago protein Affinity Purification by Peptides (Ago-APP). Overall design: Comparison of small RNA lengths in total RNA and APP-enriched RNA samples