Internucleotide movements during formation of 16 S rRNA-rRNA photocrosslinks and their connection to the 30 S subunit conformational dynamics

Ultraviolet C radiation influences the robustness of RNA integrity measurement

The analytical and clinical validity of analyses of RNA samples destined for clinical diagnosis and therapeutic management is directly impacted by RNA quality. RNA is affected by heat, enzymatic degradation, and Ultraviolet (UV) light. RNA from three eukaryotic cell lines was degraded by heat, RNase, or UV light. RNA integrity values obtained with the benchmark Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100 system were compared with those from the more recent QIAxcel Advanced system. The application of this novel method has allowed us to unravel differences between RNA biophysical and biochemical degradation modes. Agilent RNA integrity number (RIN) and QIAxcel RIS were comparable in heat-degraded and RNase III-degraded RNA. Agilent RIN and QIAxcel RIS were comparable at a RIN decision level of 7 in UV-degraded RNA but not overall. The QIAxcel RIS method was more precise than Agilent RIN for RIN<8, while the inverse was true for RIN≥8. Greater degradation of mRNA and rRNA in UV-damaged samples hampered the Agilent RIN calculation algorithm. Overall, RIS was more robust than RIN for assessing RNA integrity. The ΔΔCt-values for heat- and UV-degraded RNA samples showed slightly higher correlation with RIS than with RIN. RNA integrity can be used to categorize RNA samples for suitability for downstream gene expression analyses, independently of the RNA degradation mechanism. The new method QIAxcel is more robust and therefore allows more accurate categorization of compromised RNA samples.

RNA self-cleavage activated by ultraviolet light-induced oxidation

A novel UV-C-light-induced ribozyme activity was discovered within the highly structured 5'-genomic regions of both Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and the related Classic Swine Fever Virus (CSFV). Cleavage is mediated by exposure to UV-C light but not by exogenous oxygen radicals. It is also very selective, occurring at base positions HCV C(79) and CSFV A(45) in some molecules and at the immediately adjacent 5'-positions HCV U(78) and CSFV U(44) in others. Among other reaction products, the majority of biochemically active products detected contained 3'-phosphate and 5'-phosphate-end groups at the newly generated termini, along with a much lower amount of 3'-hydroxyl end group. While preservation of an E-loop RNA structure in the vicinity of the cleavage site was a requisite for HCV RNA self-cleavage, this was not the case for CSFV RNA. The short size of the reactive domains (~33 nt), which are compatible with primitive RNA motifs, and the lack of sequence homology, indicate that as-yet unidentified UV-activated ribozymes are likely to be found throughout structured RNAs, thereby providing clues to whether early RNA self-cleavage events were mediated by photosensitive RNA structures.

Hydrogen bonding and packing density are factors most strongly connected to limiting sites of high flexibility in the 16S rRNA in the 30S ribosome

BACKGROUND

Conformational flexibility in structured RNA frequently is critical to function. The 30S ribosomal subunit exists in different conformations in different functional states due to changes in the central part of the 16S rRNA. We are interested in evaluating the factors that might be responsible for restricting flexibility to specific parts of the 16S rRNA using biochemical data obtained from the 30S subunit in solution. This problem was approached taking advantage of the observation that there must be a high degree of conformational flexibility at sites where UV photocrosslinking occurs and a lack of flexibility inhibits photoreactivity at many other sites that are otherwise suitable for reaction.

RESULTS

We used 30S x-ray structures to quantify the properties of the nucleotide pairs at UV- and UVA-s4U-induced photocrosslinking sites in 16S rRNA and compared these to the properties of many hundreds of additional sites that have suitable geometry but do not undergo photocrosslinking. Five factors that might affect RNA flexibility were investigated - RNA interactions with ribosomal proteins, interactions with Mg2+ ions, the presence of long-range A minor motif interactions, hydrogen bonding and the count of neighboring heavy atoms around the center of each nucleobase to estimate the neighbor packing density. The two factors that are very different in the unreactive inflexible pairs compared to the reactive ones are the average number of hydrogen bonds and the average value for the number of neighboring atoms. In both cases, these factors are greater for the unreactive nucleotide pairs at a statistically very significant level.

CONCLUSION

The greater extent of hydrogen bonding and neighbor atom density in the unreactive nucleotide pairs is consistent with reduced flexibility at a majority of the unreactive sites. The reactive photocrosslinking sites are clustered in the 30S subunit and this indicates nonuniform patterns of hydrogen bonding and packing density in the 16S rRNA tertiary structure. Because this analysis addresses inter-nucleotide distances and geometry between nucleotides distant in the primary sequence, the results indicate regional and global flexibility of the rRNA.

RNA under attack: cellular handling of RNA damage

Damage to RNA from ultraviolet light, oxidation, chlorination, nitration, and akylation can include chemical modifications to nucleobases as well as RNA-RNA and RNA-protein crosslinking. In vitro studies have described a range of possible damage products, some of which are supported as physiologically relevant by in vivo observations in normal growth, stress conditions, or disease states. Damage to both messenger RNA and noncoding RNA may have functional consequences, and work has begun to elucidate the role of RNA turnover pathways and specific damage recognition pathways in clearing cells of these damaged RNAs.

RNA crosslinking methods

RNA-RNA crosslinking provides a rapid means of obtaining evidence for the proximity of functional groups in structurally complex RNAs and ribonucleoproteins. Such evidence can be used to provide a physical context for interpreting structural information from other biochemical and biophysical methods and for the design of further experiments. The identification of crosslinks that accurately reflect the native conformation of the RNA of interest is strongly dependent on the position of the crosslinking agent, the conditions of the crosslinking reaction, and the method for mapping the crosslink position. Here, we provide an overview of protocols and experimental considerations for RNA-RNA crosslinking with the most commonly used long- and short-range photoaffinity reagents. Specifically, we describe the merits and strategies for random and site-specific incorporation of these reagents into RNA, the crosslinking reaction and isolation of crosslinked products, the mapping crosslinked sites, and assessment of the crosslinking data.

Different aa-tRNAs are selected uniformly on the ribosome

Ten E. coli aminoacyl-tRNAs (aa-tRNAs) were assessed for their ability to decode cognate codons on E. coli ribosomes by using three assays that evaluate the key steps in the decoding pathway. Despite a wide variety of structural features, each aa-tRNA exhibited similar kinetic and thermodynamic properties in each assay. This surprising kinetic and thermodynamic uniformity is likely to reflect the importance of ribosome conformational changes in defining the rates and affinities of the decoding process as well as the evolutionary "tuning" of each aa-tRNA sequence to modify their individual interactions with the ribosome at each step.

Conformational energy and structure in canonical and noncanonical forms of tRNA determined by temperature analysis of the rate of s(4)U8-C13 photocrosslinking

Bacterial tRNAs frequently have 4-thiouridine (s(4)U) modification at position 8, which is adjacent to the C13-G22-m(7)G46 base triple in the elbow region of the tRNA tertiary structure. Irradiation with light in the UVA range induces an efficient photocrosslink between s(4)U8 and C13. The temperature dependence of the rate constants for photocrosslinking between the s(4)U8 and C13 has been used to investigate the tRNA conformational energy and structure in Escherichia coli tRNA(Val), tRNA(Phe), and tRNA(fMet) under different conditions. Corrections have been made in the measured rate constants to compensate for differences in the excited state lifetimes due to tRNA identity, buffer conditions, and temperature. The resulting rate constants are related to the rate at which the s(4)U8 and C13 come into the alignment needed for photoreaction; this depends on an activation energy, attributable to the conformational potential energy that occurs during the photoreaction, and on the extent of the structural change. Different photocrosslinking rate constants and temperature dependencies occur in the three tRNAs, and these differences are due both to modest differences in the activation energies and in the apparent s(4)U8-C13 geometries. Analysis of tRNA(Val) in buffers without Mg(2+) indicate a smaller activation energy (~13 kJ mol(-1)) and a larger apparent s(4)U8-C13 distance (~12 A) compared to values for the same parameters in buffers with Mg(2+) (~26 kJ mol(-1) and 0.36 A, respectively). These measurements are a quantitative indication of the strong constraint that Mg(2+) imposes on the tRNA flexibility and structure.

High-resolution crystal structure of the intramolecular d(TpA) thymine-adenine photoadduct and its mechanistic implications

A high-resolution crystal structure is reported for d(TpA)*, the intramolecular thymine–adenine photoadduct that is produced by direct ultraviolet excitation of the dinucleoside monophosphate d(TpA). It confirms the presence of a central 1,3-diazacyclooctatriene ring linking the remnants of the T and A bases, as previously deduced from heteronuclear NMR measurements by Zhao et al. (The structure of d(TpA)*, the major photoproduct of thymidylyl-(3′-5′)-deoxyadenosine. Nucleic Acids Res., 1996, 24, 1554–1560). Within the crystal, the d(TpA)* molecules exist as zwitterions with a protonated amidine fragment of the eight-membered ring neutralizing the charge of the internucleotide phosphate monoanion. The absolute configuration at the original thymine C5 and C6 atoms is determined as 5S,6R. This is consistent with d(TpA)* arising by valence isomerization of a precursor cyclobutane photoproduct with cis–syn stereochemistry that is generated by [2 + 2] photoaddition of the thymine 5,6-double bond across the C6 and C5 positions of adenine. This mode of photoaddition should be favoured by the stacked conformation of adjacent T and A bases in B-form DNA. It is probable that the primary photoreaction is mechanistically analogous to pyrimidine dimerization despite having a much lower quantum yield.

Mapping contacts of the S12-S7 intercistronic region of str operon mRNA with ribosomal protein S7 ofE. coli

In E. coli, S7 initiates 30S ribosome assembly by binding to 16S rRNA. It also regulates translation of the S12 and S7 cistrons of the 'streptomycin' operon transcript by binding to the S12-S7 intercistronic region. Here, we describe the contacts of N-terminally His(6)-tagged S7 with this region as mapped by UV-induced cross-linking. The cross-links are located at U(-34), U(-35), quite distant from the start codons of the two cistrons. In order to explain the mechanism of translational repression of S12-S7, we consider a possible conformational rearrangement of the intercistronic RNA structure induced by S7 binding.