lncRNA SLERT controls phase separation of FC/DFCs to facilitate Pol I transcription

  • Science. 2021 Jul 30;373(6554):547-555. doi: 10.1126/science.abf6582.
Man Wu   #  1 ,  Guang Xu   #  1 ,  Chong Han   #  1 ,  Peng-Fei Luan  1 ,  Yu-Hang Xing  1 ,  Fang Nan  2 ,  Liang-Zhong Yang  1 ,  Youkui Huang  1 ,  Zheng-Hu Yang  1  3 ,  Lin Shan  1 ,  Li Yang  2  3 ,  Jiaquan Liu  4 ,  Ling-Ling Chen  4  3  5
Affiliations
  • 1. State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Andrology, CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yueyang Road, Shanghai, China.
  • 2. CAS Key Laboratory of Computational Biology, Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
  • 3. School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China.
  • 4. State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Andrology, CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 320 Yueyang Road, Shanghai, China. [email protected] [email protected].
  • 5. School of Life Science, Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou, China.
  • # Contributed equally.
PMID: 34326237 DOI: 10.1126/science.abf6582
Abstract

RNA polymerase I (Pol I) transcription takes place at the border of the fibrillar center (FC) and the dense fibrillar component (DFC) in the nucleolus. Here, we report that individual spherical FC/DFC units are coated by the DEAD-box RNA helicase DDX21 in human cells. The long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) SLERT binds to DDX21 RecA domains to promote DDX21 to adopt a closed conformation at a substoichiometric ratio through a molecular chaperone-like mechanism resulting in the formation of hypomultimerized and loose DDX21 clusters that coat DFCs, which is required for proper FC/DFC liquidity and Pol I processivity. Our results suggest that SLERT is an RNA regulator that controls the biophysical properties of FC/DFCs and thus ribosomal RNA production.

Products