Cap analysis gene expression

Cap analysis gene expression (CAGE) is a gene expression technique used in molecular biology to produce a snapshot of the 5′ end of the messenger RNA population in a biological sample (the transcriptome). The small fragments (historically 27 nucleotides long, but now limited only by sequencing technologies) from the very beginnings of mRNAs (5' ends of capped transcripts) are extracted, reverse-transcribed to DNA, PCR amplified and sequenced. CAGE was first published by Hayashizaki, Carninci and co-workers in 2003.CAGE has been extensively used within the FANTOM research projects. Cap analysis gene expression (CAGE) is a gene expression technique used in molecular biology to produce a snapshot of the 5′ end of the messenger RNA population in a biological sample (the transcriptome). The small fragments (historically 27 nucleotides long, but now limited only by sequencing technologies) from the very beginnings of mRNAs (5' ends of capped transcripts) are extracted, reverse-transcribed to DNA, PCR amplified and sequenced. CAGE was first published by Hayashizaki, Carninci and co-workers in 2003.CAGE has been extensively used within the FANTOM research projects. The output of CAGE is a set of short nucleotide sequences (often called tags) with their observed counts. Using a reference genome, a researcher can usually determine, with some confidence, the original mRNA (and therefore which gene) the tag was extracted from.