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Choi H, Zhou L, Zhao Y, Dean J. RNA helicase D1PAS1 resolves R-loops and forms a complex for mouse pachytene piRNA biogenesis required for male fertility. Nucleic Acids Res 2024; 52:11973-11994. [PMID: 39162228 PMCID: PMC11514495 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkae712] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/18/2023] [Accepted: 08/06/2024] [Indexed: 08/21/2024] Open
Abstract
During meiosis, RNA polymerase II transcribes pachytene piRNA precursors with unusually long and unspliced transcripts from discrete autosomal loci in the mouse genome. Despite the importance of piRNA for male fertility and a well-defined maturation process, the transcriptional machinery remains poorly understood. Here, we document that D1PAS1, an ATP-dependent RNA helicase, is critical for pachytene piRNA expression from multiple genomic loci and subsequent translocation into the cytoplasm to ensure mature piRNA biogenesis. Depletion of D1PAS1 in gene-edited mice results in the accumulation of R-loops in pachytene spermatocytes, leading to DNA-damage-induced apoptosis, disruption of piRNA biogenesis, spermatogenic arrest, and male infertility. Transcriptome, genome-wide R-loop profiling, and proteomic analyses document that D1PAS1 regulates pachytene piRNA transcript elongation and termination. D1PAS1 subsequently forms a complex with nuclear export components to ensure pachytene piRNA precursor translocation from the nucleus to the cytoplasm for processing into small non-coding RNAs. Thus, our study defines D1PAS1 as a specific transcription activator that promotes R-loop unwinding and is a critical factor in pachytene piRNA biogenesis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Heejin Choi
- Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
| | - Lecong Zhou
- Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
| | - Yangu Zhao
- Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
| | - Jurrien Dean
- Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
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Gabel AM, Belleville AE, Thomas JD, Pineda JMB, Bradley RK. APC mutations dysregulate alternative polyadenylation in cancer. Genome Biol 2024; 25:255. [PMID: 39375704 PMCID: PMC11457450 DOI: 10.1186/s13059-024-03406-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2023] [Accepted: 09/29/2024] [Indexed: 10/09/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Alternative polyadenylation (APA) affects most human genes and is recurrently dysregulated in all studied cancers. However, the mechanistic origins of this dysregulation are incompletely understood. RESULTS We describe an unbiased analysis of molecular regulators of poly(A) site selection across The Cancer Genome Atlas and identify that colorectal adenocarcinoma is an outlier relative to all other cancer subtypes. This distinction arises from the frequent presence of loss-of-function APC mutations in colorectal adenocarcinoma, which are strongly associated with long 3' UTR expression relative to tumors lacking APC mutations. APC knockout similarly dysregulates APA in human colon organoids. By mining previously published APC eCLIP data, we show that APC preferentially binds G- and C-rich motifs just upstream of proximal poly(A) sites. Lastly, we find that reduced APC expression is associated with APA dysregulation in tumor types lacking recurrent APC mutations. CONCLUSIONS As APC has been previously identified as an RNA-binding protein that preferentially binds 3' UTRs during mouse neurogenesis, our results suggest that APC promotes proximal poly(A) site use and that APC loss and altered expression contribute to pervasive APA dysregulation in cancers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Austin M Gabel
- Computational Biology Program, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
- Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
- Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
- Medical Scientist Training Program, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Andrea E Belleville
- Computational Biology Program, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
- Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
- Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
- Molecular and Cellular Biology Program, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - James D Thomas
- Computational Biology Program, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
- Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Jose Mario Bello Pineda
- Computational Biology Program, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
- Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA
- Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
- Medical Scientist Training Program, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Robert K Bradley
- Computational Biology Program, Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
- Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA, USA.
- Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
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Noble M, Chatterjee A, Sekaran T, Schwarzl T, Hentze MW. Cytosolic RNA binding of the mitochondrial TCA cycle enzyme malate dehydrogenase. RNA (NEW YORK, N.Y.) 2024; 30:839-853. [PMID: 38609156 PMCID: PMC11182015 DOI: 10.1261/rna.079925.123] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/11/2023] [Accepted: 03/26/2024] [Indexed: 04/14/2024]
Abstract
Several enzymes of intermediary metabolism have been identified to bind RNA in cells, with potential consequences for the bound RNAs and/or the enzyme. In this study, we investigate the RNA-binding activity of the mitochondrial enzyme malate dehydrogenase 2 (MDH2), which functions in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and the malate-aspartate shuttle. We confirmed in cellulo RNA binding of MDH2 using orthogonal biochemical assays and performed enhanced cross-linking and immunoprecipitation (eCLIP) to identify the cellular RNAs associated with endogenous MDH2. Surprisingly, MDH2 preferentially binds cytosolic over mitochondrial RNAs, although the latter are abundant in the milieu of the mature protein. Subcellular fractionation followed by RNA-binding assays revealed that MDH2-RNA interactions occur predominantly outside of mitochondria. We also found that a cytosolically retained N-terminal deletion mutant of MDH2 is competent to bind RNA, indicating that mitochondrial targeting is dispensable for MDH2-RNA interactions. MDH2 RNA binding increased when cellular NAD+ levels (MDH2's cofactor) were pharmacologically diminished, suggesting that the metabolic state of cells affects RNA binding. Taken together, our data implicate an as yet unidentified function of MDH2-binding RNA in the cytosol.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michelle Noble
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg 69117, Germany
| | | | - Thileepan Sekaran
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg 69117, Germany
| | - Thomas Schwarzl
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg 69117, Germany
| | - Matthias W Hentze
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Heidelberg 69117, Germany
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Deyneko IV. BestCRM: An Exhaustive Search for Optimal Cis-Regulatory Modules in Promoters Accelerated by the Multidimensional Hash Function. Int J Mol Sci 2024; 25:1903. [PMID: 38339181 PMCID: PMC10856692 DOI: 10.3390/ijms25031903] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/01/2023] [Revised: 01/24/2024] [Accepted: 01/26/2024] [Indexed: 02/12/2024] Open
Abstract
The concept of cis-regulatory modules located in gene promoters represents today's vision of the organization of gene transcriptional regulation. Such modules are a combination of two or more single, short DNA motifs. The bioinformatic identification of such modules belongs to so-called NP-hard problems with extreme computational complexity, and therefore, simplifications, assumptions, and heuristics are usually deployed to tackle the problem. In practice, this requires, first, many parameters to be set before the search, and second, it leads to the identification of locally optimal results. Here, a novel method is presented, aimed at identifying the cis-regulatory elements in gene promoters based on an exhaustive search of all the feasible modules' configurations. All required parameters are automatically estimated using positive and negative datasets. To be computationally efficient, the search is accelerated using a multidimensional hash function, allowing the search to complete in a few hours on a regular laptop (for example, a CPU Intel i7, 3.2 GH, 32 Gb RAM). Tests on an established benchmark and real data show better performance of BestCRM compared to the available methods according to several metrics like specificity, sensitivity, AUC, etc. A great practical advantage of the method is its minimum number of input parameters-apart from positive and negative promoters, only a desired level of module presence in promoters is required.
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Affiliation(s)
- Igor V Deyneko
- K.A. Timiryazev Institute of Plant Physiology RAS, 35 Botanicheskaya Str., Moscow 127276, Russia
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