A single-molecule method for the quantitation of microRNA gene expression.

MicroRNAs (miRNA) are short endogenous noncoding RNA molecules that regulate fundamental cellular processes such as cell differentiation, cell proliferation and apoptosis through modulation of gene expression. Critical to understanding the role of miRNAs in this regulation is a method to rapidly and accurately quantitate miRNA gene expression. Existing methods lack sensitivity, specificity and typically require upfront enrichment, ligation and/or amplification steps.