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We're working on invertebrate hemolymph (blood) and we have found with flow cytometry (staining with DRAQ5) a cell-like population without nucleus but it has RNA production.

Does anyone any experience with something similar? May anyone recommend any publication with something like that?

More information:

1) We don't know the real population size because we have identified it by flow cytometry, future experiments we wish to use TEM to characterize it better.

2) We know that this "population" produces RNA because we have extracted total RNA using low input RNA kit and run the result in Bioanalyzer.

3) We "know"/suspected this population doesn't have cell-nucleus because DRAQ5 is a DNA staining and this population is DRAQ5-. We wish study that by confocal microscopy ASAP.

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    $\begingroup$ Welcome to Biology.SE! Will you please edit your question to include more information – including: 1) size of these putative "cells", 2) how you know they produce RNA, and 3) how you know they don't have a nucleus? $\endgroup$
    – tyersome
    Jul 22, 2019 at 18:00
  • $\begingroup$ My first inclination is to suspect some sort of prokaryote — can you rule that out? $\endgroup$
    – tyersome
    Jul 22, 2019 at 18:04
  • $\begingroup$ Hi! Thanks so much for your contribution but I might not be a prokaryotic population because it's producing 18S and 28S rRNA, instead of 16S and 23S. $\endgroup$ Jul 23, 2019 at 18:42
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    $\begingroup$ This is a bit outside my wheelhouse so forgive me if I am ignorant of something, but does (2) actually mean RNA is being produced? Or could it just be that some RNA is still present? For example immature RBCs have RNA and make proteins despite lacking a nucleus. $\endgroup$
    – Bryan Krause
    Jul 23, 2019 at 18:54

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