Human RNase L Tunes Gene Expression by Selectively Destabilizing the MicroRNA-Regulated Transcriptome

Purpose: The goal of this study was to map the pathway of mRNA decay by human RNase L Methods: Total RNA was extracted (RNeasy kit, Qiagen). RNA integrity was verified by an RNA 6000 Nano Chip, using BioAnalyzer and 2100 Expert software (Agilent Technologies). The mRNA was enriched by oligo-dT pulldown from total RNA, followed by fragmentation, adapter ligation, PCR amplification, and finally sequencing on Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform. For sequencing introns, the oligo-dT pulldown step was replaced with Ribo-Zero rRNA removal (Illumina). Sequencing reads were mapped to the human genome hg19 using TopHat 2 set to map stranded reads with default parameters. Mapped read counts were obtained using HTseq-count run in union mode. Results: We developed an approach for transcriptome-wide profiling of RNase L activity in human cells and identified hundreds of direct RNA targets and non-targets. We show that this RNase L-dependent decay (RLDD) selectively affects transcripts regulated by miR-17/miR-29/miR-200 and other microRNAs that function as suppressors of mammalian cell adhesion and proliferation. RNase L mimics the effects of these microRNAs and acts as a suppressor of proliferation and adhesion in mammalian cells. Conclusions: Our data suggest that RLDD serves to establish an anti-proliferative state via destabilization of the microRNA-regulated transcriptome. Overall design: Human mRNA profiles from HeLa, T47D and HAP1 cells were generated by deep sequencing using Illumina Illumina HiSeq 2000.

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Rath S, Donovan J, Whitney G, Chitrakar A, Wang W, Korennykh A