Blocking of the 3´ -hydroxyl of m7G with 3´-0-Me assures that the capped transcripts are homogeneous. The 3´ - hydroxyl of the non-methylated G is the only 3´ - hydroxyl available for initiation (1).
The 5´terminal m7G cap present on most eukaryotic mRNAs promotes translationin vitroat the initiation level (2,3,4). For most RNAs, elimination of the cap structure causes a loss of stability, especially against exonuclease degradation (5), and a decrease in the formation of the initiation complex of mRNAs for protein synthesis (5,6). Certain prokaryotic mRNAs containing a 5´ terminal cap structure are translated as efficiently as or more efficiently than eukaryotic mRNAs in a eukaryotic cell-free protein synthesizing system (6). Also a cap requirement has been observed for splicing eukaryotic substrate RNAs (7).
A method usingE. coliRNA Polymerase primed with m7G(5´)ppp(5´)G or m7G(5´)ppp(5´)A for an efficientin vitrosynthesis of capped RNAs has been developed by Contreas (8). Larger amounts of capped RNAs are produced by transcription systems using SP6 RNA Polymerase primed with m7G(5´)ppp(5´)G (7).