Immobilization of RNA: application to single molecule spectroscopy

RNA molecules play important roles in many biological processes including the storage and transfer of information in the cell. Importantly, RNA folds associated with biological functions. The development of new single-molecule methodologies allows to study native RNA molecules, independent in their sizes, in realtime. This requires the immobilization of RNA molecules on a surface. At the present time, however, there is insufficient knowledge on how to optimize the attachment of these molecules to a plane. We report a direct approach to immobilize long RNA on a glass surface. Importantly, these procedures can be applied to both native and synthetic RNA molecules to be probed by various single molecule methodologies.