MRNA stability
From OpenWetWare
What is the half-life of a typical mRNA in E. coli?
Jennifer Braff and Caitlin Conboy in the Endy Lab at MIT measured the half-lives of some transcripts in E. coli MC4100 in a chemostat. This work was part of the Soup to nuts project.
They measured mRNA half-lives for the following BioBrick parts -
| Construct | mRNA Half-life
(min) |
mRNA degradation rate
(s-1) |
|---|---|---|
| pSB4A3-I7100 | 3.13±0.48 | |
| pSB3K3-I7100 | 5.36±2.07 | |
| pSB4A3-I7101 | 2.19±0.28 | |
| pSB3K3-I7101 | 2.24±0.33 | 5.2E-3 |
| pSB4A3-I7107 | 0.98±0.04 | 0.012±0.0005 |
| pSB3K3-I7107 | 2.18±0.34 | 5.3E-3±0.81E-3 |
| pSB4A3-I7109 | 1.55±0.18 | 0.0075±0.0009 |
| pSB3K3-I7109 | 3.08±0.65 | 3.8E-3±0.79E-3 |
From the above data, we can calculate a mean value of 4.8E-3 for the three devices using B0032 on pSB3k3 (I7101, I7107, and I7109).
These data are consistent with measured half-lives for endogenous E. coli mRNA [1]. Bernstein et al. report that 80% of E. coli mRNA half-lives are between 3 and 8 min. Bernstein et al. measured a global average mRNA half-life for E. coli of 5.7 min.
