Project description:Despite the overwhelming information about sRNAs, one of the biggest challenges in the sRNA field is characterizing sRNA targetomes. Thus, we develop a novel method to identify RNAs that interact with a specific sRNA, regardless of the type of regulation (positive or negative) or targets (mRNA, tRNA, sRNA). This method is called MAPS: MS2 affinity purification coupled with RNA sequencing. As proof of principle, we identified RNAs bound to RybB, a well-characterized E. coli sRNA. Identification of RNAs co-purified with MS2-RybB in a rne131 ΔrybB strain. RybB (without MS2) was used as control
Project description:Despite the overwhelming information about sRNAs, one of the biggest challenges in the sRNA field is characterizing sRNA targetomes. Thus, we develop a novel method to identify RNAs that interact with a specific sRNA, regardless of the type of regulation (positive or negative) or targets (mRNA, tRNA, sRNA). This method is called MAPS: MS2 affinity purification coupled with RNA sequencing. As proof of principle, we identified RNAs bound to RyhB, a well-characterized E. coli sRNA. Identification of RNAs co-purified with MS2-RyhB in a rne131 ?ryhB strain. RyhB (without MS2) was used as control
Project description:RNA delivery is a method of choice to achieve transient gene expression for research and in cell- or gene-based therapies. To improve retroviral transfer, we designed a dimerization-independent MS2-driven packaging system using MS2-retrovirus chimeras. We delivered RUNX2- or DLX5-mRNA into primary human bone-marrow mesenchymal-stem-cells. We used microarrays to detail the global programme of gene expression confirming the effects of pro-osteogenic genes transduced by MS2 chimeric lentiviral particles.
Project description:The Myc/Max heterodimer has crucial roles in normal cellular processes such as cell proliferation, metabolism, apoptosis, and differentiation, but its activity is often deregulated in a majority of human cancers. In an effort to explore alternative modes of Myc perturbation, we identified KI-MS2-008 as a small molecule that binds Max and modulates Myc-driven transcription, and in some cellular contexts, KI-MS2-008 treatment leads to a decrease in c-Myc protein levels. As the Myc/Max heterodimer controls many cellular processes, we expected that treatment with this small molecule would cause changes in the transcriptome. We found that treatment with 10 µM KI-MS2-008 resulted in global alterations in the transcriptome, mimicking direct Myc inactivation with doxycycline in P493-6, a B cell line with a Tet-Off system for c-Myc expression. We also discovered enrichment of various Myc target gene sets in the genes downregulated in response to KI-MS2-008 treatment in P493-6 cells. This trend was also observed in ST486 cells, but not in P3HR1 cells, which were chosen as non-engineered B cell lines that were sensitive and insensitive, respectively, toward KI-MS2-008 in cell viability assays.
Project description:During ribosomal and transfer RNA maturation, external transcribed spacer (ETS) and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences are excised and, as non-functional by-products, are rapidly degraded. The 3’ETS of the glyW-cysT-leuZ polycistronic tRNA precursor was highly and specifically enriched by co-purification with at least two different small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs), RyhB and RybB. Both sRNAs were shown to base pair with the same region in the 3’ETS of leuZ (3’ETSleuZ). Disrupting the pairing by mutating 3’ETSleuZ significantly increased the activity of sRNAs, even under non-inducing conditions. Our results indicate that 3’ETSleuZ prevents sRNA-dependent remodeling of tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle fluxes and increases antibiotic sensitivity when sRNAs are transcriptionally repressed. This suggests that 3’ETSleuZ functions as a sponge to absorb transcriptional noise from repressed sRNAs. Finally, the fact that RybB and MicF sRNAs are co-purified with ITSmetZ-metW and ITSmetW-metV strongly suggests a much broader phenomenon. Identification of sRNAs co-purified with MS2-ITSmetZW and MS2-ITSmetWV. ITSmetZW and ITSmetWV (without MS2) were used as control
Project description:Nearly every step of RNA regulation is mediated by binding proteins (RBPs). The most common method to identify specific RBP target transcripts in vivo is by crosslinking (“CLIP” and its variants), which rely on protein-RNA crosslinking and specific antibodies. Another recently introduced method exploits RNA editing, with the hyperactive mutant catalytic domain of ADAR covalently attached to a specific RBP (“HyperTRIBE”). Both CLIP and TRIBE approaches suffer from difficulties in distinguishing real RNA targets from false negative and especially false positive signals. To critically evaluate this problem, we used fibroblasts from a mouse where every endogenous β-actin mRNA molecule was tagged with the bacteriophage MS2 RNA stem loops in the β-actin 3’ UTR; hence there is only a single bona fide target mRNA for the MS2 capsid protein (MCP). CLIP and HyperTRIBE (hereafter referred to as TRIBE) could both detect the single RNA target, albeit with some false positives (transcripts lacking the MS2 stem loops). Consistent false positive CLIP signals could be attributed to nonspecific antibody interactions. However, to our surprise the putative false positive TRIBE targets correlated with the location of genes spatially proximal to the β-actin gene. This result indicates that MCP-ADAR bound to β-actin mRNA contacted and edited nearby nascent transcripts, as evidenced by frequent intronic editing. Importantly, nascent transcripts on nearby chromosomes were also edited, agreeing with the interchromosomal contacts observed in chromosome paint and Hi-C. These results were repeated in human osteosarcoma cells with a randomly integrated and inducible MS2 reporter and indicated that MS2-TRIBE can be applied to a broad array of cells and transcripts. The identification of nascent RNA-RNA contacts imply that RNA-regulatory proteins such as splicing factors can associate with multiple nascent transcripts and thereby form domains of post-transcriptional activity, which increase their local concentrations. These results indicate that TRIBE combined with the MS2 system, MS2-TRIBE, is a new tool to study nuclear RNA organization and regulation.
Project description:In this study, we performed MAPS (MS2-affinity purification coupled with RNA sequencing) to draw the interacting map of MicF small regulatory RNA in vivo.