FIGURE 3.

Comparison of the detection sensitivity of Northern blots and splinted ligation. The indicated amounts of total HeLa cell RNA were assayed for the presence of hsa-miR-21 either by splinted ligation (A-1) or Northern blot (A-2) as described in Materials and Methods. In A-3, the Northern blot was overprobed with an oligonucleotide complementary to U6 snRNA. In A-4, signals from A-1 and A-2 were quantified with a Storm PhosphorImager (Amersham). In B, the indicated amounts of total RNA from human brain were assayed for the presence of hsa-miR-124a either by splinted ligation (B-1) or Northern blot (B-2,B-3) as described in Materials and Methods. (B-4) signals were quantitated as in A.