The RiboTag methodology was developed as a joint effort between our lab and that of Stan McKnight and Paul Amieux in the Pharmacology Department at the University of Washington. The approach provides a powerful tool for interrogating the ribosome-associated transcriptomes of single cell types in complex tissues such as brain through a new mouse line called RiboTag. The RiboTag mouse carries a ribosomal protein gene with a floxed C-terminal exon followed by an identical exon tagged with hemagglutinin (HA). When RiboTag is crossed to a mouse expressing a cell-type-specific Cre recombinase, expression of the epitope-tagged protein is activated in the cell type of interest. Immunoprecipitation of polyribosomes with monoclonal antibody against HA yields the ribosome-associated transcriptomes from the specific cell type. The RiboTag mouse is available through Jackson Laboratories.

The RiboTag methodology is schematized below:

Publication: Sanz et al. (2009)