Chemical pulldown reveals dynamic pseudouridylation of the mammalian transcriptome
- Nat Chem Biol. 2015 Aug;11(8):592-7. doi: 10.1038/nchembio.1836.
- 1. State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, School of Life Sciences and Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
- 2. Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
- 3. 1] State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, School of Life Sciences and Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China. [2] Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China.
- 4. 1] State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, School of Life Sciences and Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China. [2] Synthetic and Functional Biomolecules Center, Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Pseudouridine (Ψ) is the most abundant post-transcriptional RNA modification, yet little is known about its prevalence, mechanism and function in mRNA. Here, we performed quantitative MS analysis and show that Ψ is much more prevalent (Ψ/U ratio ∼0.2-0.6%) in mammalian mRNA than previously believed. We developed N3-CMC-enriched pseudouridine Sequencing (CeU-Seq), a selective chemical labeling and pulldown method, to identify 2,084 Ψ sites within 1,929 human transcripts, of which four (in ribosomal RNA and EEF1A1 mRNA) are biochemically verified. We show that hPUS1, a known Ψ synthase, acts on human mRNA; under stress, CeU-Seq demonstrates inducible and stress-specific mRNA pseudouridylation. Applying CeU-Seq to the mouse transcriptome revealed conserved and tissue-specific pseudouridylation. Collectively, our approaches allow comprehensive analysis of transcriptome-wide pseudouridylation and provide tools for functional studies of Ψ-mediated epigenetic regulation.