Fig. 1.

Schematic of transcript-specific mRNP affinity capture. Native protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions are stabilized in vivo by covalent cross-linking with the addition of formaldehyde to growing yeast cells. Cells are harvested and lysed, and the extracts incubated under denaturing, stringent conditions with magnetic bead-bound DNA oligonucleotides complementary to a single RNA population. Affinity captured, transcript-specific mRNPs are washed with denaturing buffers and low salt and processed for downstream applications including targeted RNA or protein analysis to monitor mRNP integrity and specificity of capture, or global protein identification by mass spectrometry