We have been closely following the interesting case of the discontinuation of tobacco acid pyrophosphatase (TAP) and the efforts of the world’s RNA biologists to find a suitable alternative. Our previous post gives a bit of the background and discusses how protocols for 5′ RACE, transcriptional start site (TSS) mapping and GRO-Seq require a good decapping enzyme to remove cap structures from RNAs to allow oligocapping. Here we discuss two new commercial offerings to replace the discontinued TAP enzyme and show some user data comparing the 3 enzymes.

As detailed in our previous post, the discontinuation of the enzyme tobacco acid pyrophosphatase (TAP), has left many molecular biology researchers without a suitable enzyme for their protocols. Perhaps the most classic assay using this enzyme was 5′ RACE, which required TAP to remove the 5′ mRNA cap yielding a 5′-monophosphate RNA.