Analysis of post-transcriptional RNA metabolism in prokaryotes.

Post-transcriptional RNA metabolic pathways play important roles in permitting prokaryotes to operate under a variety of environmental conditions. Although significant progress has been made during the last decade in deciphering RNA processing pathways in a number of bacteria, a complete understanding of post-transcriptional RNA metabolism in any single microorganism is far from reality. Here we describe multiple experimental approaches that can be used to study mRNA stability, tRNA and rRNA processing, sRNA metabolism, and polyadenylation in prokaryotes. The methods described here can be readily utilized in both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria with simple modifications.