Browsing by Author "Rantanen, Mimi"

The main purpose of this study was to participate in setting up the In situ hybridization for microRNA detection at the Department of Pharmacology. In situ hybridization (ISH) is an effective method for detection of molecules like DNA and RNA from paraffin fixed tissue sections. ISH provides information of expression and location of selected target molecules. Challenges of ISH for miRNA are the small size of the miRNAs and requirement of RNase free environment to prevent contamination. Micro-RNAs are single-stranded, noncoding, 19 to 25 nucleotides long RNAs, involved in post-transcriptional gene silencing. MiRNA-1 is known to be upregulated in ischemic heart muscle, which increases arrhythmias and apoptosis in heart. Adminstration of isoprenaline to Wistar rats induces similar conditions as acute myocardial infarction, which leads to rise in mir-1 levels. By in situ hybridization we were able to detect mir-1 from heart tissue and adjust suitable conditions for ISH.