Peter Attia· MD
so there's also RNA from tumors in circulation now now how how stable is that Alex I was under the impression that RNA wouldn't be terribly stable uh Unlike DNA which of course is double strand and quite stable um so H how how do you capture cell-free RNA yeah so so naked RNA is is not very stable um however there's um there's proteins that if the RNA is bound to um and one type is called an argonut protein if the RNA is bound to it um it is protected there's also and this is I assume this is typically messenger RNA that's been in the process of being transcribed but somewhere along the way before translation occurs that there's the disruption to the cell that results in Lis or something and so the the the the you're just basically getting the cell-free RNA because you happened to catch it at that point it was it was it was replicating cell or something or it was just translating protein or yeah or during apoptosis it's somehow during some kind of program cell death it's it's being digested or bound um you know um you know the the amount relative to the amount of cell death is low so presumably most of the RNA is destroyed but you know enough of it does get protected and bound to proteins um you know whether or not it's kind of cellular detrius or Garbage or it's intentional you know it's kind of a a different question but it is present um there's also vascular structure so little bubbles of of membrane that the RNA can be contained in um the most common one is referred to as an exosome um which are these little vesicles in in circulation so um in a variety of different ways you can have messenger RNA and other types of RNA preserved outside of cells in in circulation