MicroRNA expression profiling of single whole embryonic stem cells. Nucleic Acids Res

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of 17–25 nt non-coding RNAs that have been shown to have critical functions in a wide variety of biological processes during development. Recently developed miRNA microarray techniques have helped to accelerate research on miRNAs. However, in some instances there is only a limited amount of material available for analysis, which requires more sensitive techni-ques that can preferably work on single cells. Here we demonstrate that it is possible to analyse miRNA in single cells by using a real-time PCR-based 220-plex miRNA expression profiling method. Development of this technique will greatly facilitate miRNA-related research on cells, such as the founder population of primordial germ cells where rapid and dynamic changes occur in a few cells, and for analys-ing heterogeneous population of cells. In these and similar cases, our method of single cell analysis is critical for elucidating the diverse roles of miRNAs