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bioRxiv · 10.64898/2026.07.07.736975

Nuclear-BRITE: an enhanced MS2 system for live-cell imaging of nuclear RNAs

Cawte, A. D.·Cihlova, B.·Brockdorff, N.
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Abstract

The MS2 system has been widely adopted for live-cell single molecule imaging of mRNA, but is of limited applicability for RNAs present in the cell nucleus due to excess nuclear-localised fluorescent capsid protein. Here we describe Nuclear-BRITE, an improved methodology that reduces nuclear background signal, enabling fast live-cell imaging of a wide range of endogenously tagged nuclear RNAs at single-molecule resolution without perturbing their abundance, localisation or function.

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Cawte, A. D., Cihlova, B., Brockdorff, N.. 2026-07-08. Nuclear-BRITE: an enhanced MS2 system for live-cell imaging of nuclear RNAs. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.07.07.736975

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