Daniela Barros-Silva

1. Introduction Urological cancers, including those of the prostate (PCa), kidney, and bladder (BlCa), are a major cause of cancer-related morbidity and mortality [1,2]. Whereas PCa is the most frequent cancer among men, BlCa is the second-most frequent malignancy of the urinary tract, and renal cell carcinoma (RCC), although less incident, is the most lethal [1,3]. Altogether, they are the second most incident and third deadliest group of neoplasms, worldwide [1,4,5].

In this ‘Peek behind the paper’, Elena Martens-Uzonova (left), Assistant Professor in the Department of Urology at the Erasmus University Medical Center (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), discusses her paper on the development of a PCR technique that allows the quantitation of ribosome methylation (2’O-methylation) in small amounts of RNA from clinically obtained tumor tissue, which was recently published in BioTechniques.

BioTechniquesVol. 74, No. 5 ReportsOpen Access Abstract Ribose 2′O-methylation (Nm, ribomethylation) is the most abundant RNA modification present in rRNA. It has been shown that alterations in ribosomal 2′O-methylation at individual Nm sites likely reflect regulated cellular processes.