scholarly journals Architecture of RNA influences plant biology

Author(s):  
Jiaying Zhu ◽  
Changhao Li ◽  
Xu Peng ◽  
Xiuren Zhang

Abstract The majority of the genome is transcribed to RNA in living organisms. RNA transcripts can form astonishing arrays of secondary and tertiary structures via Watson-Crick, Hoogsteen or wobble base pairing. In vivo, RNA folding is not a simple thermodynamics event of minimizing free energy. Instead, the process is constrained by transcription, RNA binding proteins (RBPs), steric factors and micro-environment. RNA secondary structure (RSS) plays myriad roles in numerous biological processes, such as RNA processing, stability, transportation and translation in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Emerging evidence has also implicated RSS in RNA trafficking, liquid-liquid phase separation and plant responses to environmental variations such as temperature and salinity. At the molecular level, RSS is correlated with regulating splicing, polyadenylation, protein systhsis, and miRNA biogenesis and functions. In this review, we summarized newly reported methods for probing RSS in vivo and functions and mechanisms of RSS in plant physiology.

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Mrinmoyee Majumder ◽  
Viswanathan Palanisamy

Control of gene expression is critical in shaping the pro-and eukaryotic organisms’ genotype and phenotype. The gene expression regulatory pathways solely rely on protein–protein and protein–nucleic acid interactions, which determine the fate of the nucleic acids. RNA–protein interactions play a significant role in co- and post-transcriptional regulation to control gene expression. RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are a diverse group of macromolecules that bind to RNA and play an essential role in RNA biology by regulating pre-mRNA processing, maturation, nuclear transport, stability, and translation. Hence, the studies aimed at investigating RNA–protein interactions are essential to advance our knowledge in gene expression patterns associated with health and disease. Here we discuss the long-established and current technologies that are widely used to study RNA–protein interactions in vivo. We also present the advantages and disadvantages of each method discussed in the review.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
André P. Gerber

RNA–protein interactions frame post-transcriptional regulatory networks and modulate transcription and epigenetics. While the technological advances in RNA sequencing have significantly expanded the repertoire of RNAs, recently developed biochemical approaches combined with sensitive mass-spectrometry have revealed hundreds of previously unrecognized and potentially novel RNA-binding proteins. Nevertheless, a major challenge remains to understand how the thousands of RNA molecules and their interacting proteins assemble and control the fate of each individual RNA in a cell. Here, I review recent methodological advances to approach this problem through systematic identification of proteins that interact with particular RNAs in living cells. Thereby, a specific focus is given to in vivo approaches that involve crosslinking of RNA–protein interactions through ultraviolet irradiation or treatment of cells with chemicals, followed by capture of the RNA under study with antisense-oligonucleotides and identification of bound proteins with mass-spectrometry. Several recent studies defining interactomes of long non-coding RNAs, viral RNAs, as well as mRNAs are highlighted, and short reference is given to recent in-cell protein labeling techniques. These recent experimental improvements could open the door for broader applications and to study the remodeling of RNA–protein complexes upon different environmental cues and in disease.


2003 ◽  
Vol 23 (19) ◽  
pp. 7055-7067 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly A. Waggoner ◽  
Stephen A. Liebhaber

ABSTRACT Posttranscriptional controls in higher eukaryotes are central to cell differentiation and developmental programs. These controls reflect sequence-specific interactions of mRNAs with one or more RNA binding proteins. The α-globin poly(C) binding proteins (αCPs) comprise a highly abundant subset of K homology (KH) domain RNA binding proteins and have a characteristic preference for binding single-stranded C-rich motifs. αCPs have been implicated in translation control and stabilization of multiple cellular and viral mRNAs. To explore the full contribution of αCPs to cell function, we have identified a set of mRNAs that associate in vivo with the major αCP2 isoforms. One hundred sixty mRNA species were consistently identified in three independent analyses of αCP2-RNP complexes immunopurified from a human hematopoietic cell line (K562). These mRNAs could be grouped into subsets encoding cytoskeletal components, transcription factors, proto-oncogenes, and cell signaling factors. Two mRNAs were linked to ceroid lipofuscinosis, indicating a potential role for αCP2 in this infantile neurodegenerative disease. Surprisingly, αCP2 mRNA itself was represented in αCP2-RNP complexes, suggesting autoregulatory control of αCP2 expression. In vitro analyses of representative target mRNAs confirmed direct binding of αCP2 within their 3′ untranslated regions. These data expand the list of mRNAs that associate with αCP2 in vivo and establish a foundation for modeling its role in coordinating pathways of posttranscriptional gene regulation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolay Manavski ◽  
Louis-Valentin Meteignier ◽  
Margarita Rojas ◽  
Andreas Brachmann ◽  
Alice Barkan ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTPentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins are helical repeat-proteins that bind RNA in a modular fashion with a sequence-specificity that can be manipulated by the use of an amino acid code. As such, PPR repeats are promising scaffolds for the design of RNA binding proteins for synthetic biology applications. However, the in vivo functional capabilities of artificial PPR proteins built from consensus PPR motifs are just starting to be explored. Here, we report in vivo functions of an artificial PPR protein, dPPRrbcL, made of consensus PPR motifs that were designed to bind a sequence near the 5’ end of rbcL transcripts in Arabidopsis chloroplasts. We used a functional complementation assay to demonstrate that this protein bound its intended RNA target with specificity in vivo and that it substituted for a natural PPR protein by stabilizing processed rbcL mRNA. We targeted a second protein of analogous design to the petL 5’ UTR, where it substituted for the native stabilizing PPR protein PGR3, albeit inefficiently. These results showed that artificial PPRs can be engineered to functionally mimic the class of native PPR proteins that serve as physical barriers against exoribonucleases.


eLife ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yarden Katz ◽  
Feifei Li ◽  
Nicole J Lambert ◽  
Ethan S Sokol ◽  
Wai-Leong Tam ◽  
...  

The conserved Musashi (Msi) family of RNA binding proteins are expressed in stem/progenitor and cancer cells, but generally absent from differentiated cells, consistent with a role in cell state regulation. We found that Msi genes are rarely mutated but frequently overexpressed in human cancers and are associated with an epithelial-luminal cell state. Using ribosome profiling and RNA-seq analysis, we found that Msi proteins regulate translation of genes implicated in epithelial cell biology and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), and promote an epithelial splicing pattern. Overexpression of Msi proteins inhibited the translation of Jagged1, a factor required for EMT, and repressed EMT in cell culture and in mammary gland in vivo. Knockdown of Msis in epithelial cancer cells promoted loss of epithelial identity. Our results show that mammalian Msi proteins contribute to an epithelial gene expression program in neural and mammary cell types.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Munteanu ◽  
Neelanjan Mukherjee ◽  
Uwe Ohler

AbstractMotivationRNA-binding proteins (RBPs) regulate every aspect of RNA metabolism and function. There are hundreds of RBPs encoded in the eukaryotic genomes, and each recognize its RNA targets through a specific mixture of RNA sequence and structure properties. For most RBPs, however, only a primary sequence motif has been determined, while the structure of the binding sites is uncharacterized.ResultsWe developed SSMART, an RNA motif finder that simultaneously models the primary sequence and the structural properties of the RNA targets sites. The sequence-structure motifs are represented as consensus strings over a degenerate alphabet, extending the IUPAC codes for nucleotides to account for secondary structure preferences. Evaluation on synthetic data showed that SSMART is able to recover both sequence and structure motifs implanted into 3‘UTR-like sequences, for various degrees of structured/unstructured binding sites. In addition, we successfully used SSMART on high-throughput in vivo and in vitro data, showing that we not only recover the known sequence motif, but also gain insight into the structural preferences of the RBP.AvailabilitySSMART is freely available at https://ohlerlab.mdc-berlin.de/software/SSMART_137/[email protected]


Author(s):  
Hua Jin ◽  
Daxiang Na ◽  
Reazur Rahman ◽  
Weijin Xu ◽  
Allegra Fieldsend ◽  
...  

Abstract4E-BP (eIF4E-BP) represses translation initiation by binding to the 5’cap-binding protein eIF4E and inhibiting its activity. Although 4E-BP has been shown to be important in growth control, stress response, cancer, neuronal activity and mammalian circadian rhythms, it is not understood how it preferentially represses a subset of mRNAs. We successfully used hyperTRIBE (Targets of RNA-binding proteins identified by editing) to identify in vivo 4E-BP mRNA targets in both Drosophila and mammals under conditions known to activate 4E-BP. The protein associates with specific mRNAs, and ribosome profiling data show that mTOR inhibition changes the translational efficiency of 4E-BP TRIBE targets compared to non-targets. In both systems, these targets have specific motifs and are enriched in translation-related pathways, which correlate well with the known activity of 4E-BP and suggest that it modulates the binding specificity of eIF4E and contributes to mTOR translational specificity.


1999 ◽  
Vol 112 (24) ◽  
pp. 4501-4512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y.M. Yannoni ◽  
K. White

The neuron specific Drosophila ELAV protein belongs to the ELAV family of RNA binding proteins which are characterized by three highly conserved RNA recognition motifs, an N-terminal domain, and a hinge region between the second and third RNA recognition motifs. Despite their highly conserved RNA recognition motifs the ELAV family members are a group of proteins with diverse posttranscriptional functions including splicing regulation, mRNA stability and translatability and have a variety of subcellular localizations. The role of the ELAV hinge in localization and function was examined using transgenes encoding ELAV hinge deletions, in vivo. Subcellular localization of the hinge mutant proteins revealed that residues between amino acids 333–374 are necessary for nuclear localization. This delineated sequence has no significant homology to classical nuclear localization sequences, but it is similar to the recently characterized nucleocytoplasmic shuttling sequence, the HNS, from a human ELAV family member, HuR. This defined sequence, however, was insufficient for nuclear localization as tested using hinge-GFP fusion proteins. Functional assays revealed that mutant proteins that fail to localize to the nucleus are unable to provide ELAV vital function, but their function is significantly restored when translocated into the nucleus by a heterologous nuclear localization sequence tag.


1993 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5323-5330 ◽  
Author(s):  
S A Amero ◽  
M J Matunis ◽  
E L Matunis ◽  
J W Hockensmith ◽  
G Raychaudhuri ◽  
...  

The protein on ecdysone puffs (PEP) is associated preferentially with active ecdysone-inducible puffs on Drosophila polytene chromosomes and contains sequence motifs characteristic of transcription factors and RNA-binding proteins (S. A. Amero, S. C. R. Elgin, and A. L. Beyer, Genes Dev. 5:188-200, 1991). PEP is associated with RNA in vivo, as demonstrated here by the sensitivity of PEP-specific chromosomal immunostaining in situ to RNase digestion and by the immunopurification of PEP in Drosophila cell extract with heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein (hnRNP) complexes. As revealed by sequential immunostaining, PEP is found on a subset of chromosomal sites bound by the HRB (heterogeneous nuclear RNA-binding) proteins, which are basic Drosophila hnRNPs. These observations lead us to suggest that a unique, PEP-containing hnRNP complex assembles preferentially on the transcripts of ecdysone-regulated genes in Drosophila melanogaster presumably to expedite the transcription and/or processing of these transcripts.


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