Biology subjects

Trendel, J.

Publications and source records attributed to Trendel, J..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Peptide-RNA photo-crosslinks with tunable RNA chain map protein-RNA interfaces

Photocrosslinking mass spectrometry (MS) can map protein-RNA interfaces in living cells, but current isolation procedures for peptide-RNA crosslinks eliminate most RNA and therefore cannot identify the crosslinked RNA sequence. We introduce pepR-MS, a method that enriches peptide-RNA crosslinks with RNA chains of tunable length. To maximize proteomic depth, we applied pepR-MS to generate highly truncated RNA adducts, identifying over 34,000 unique crosslinks in 589 proteins of breast cancer cells and pinpointing RNA contacts in hundreds of structured domains and intrinsically disordered regions. By modulating nuclease digestion, longer RNA chains of up to five nucleotides were retained and sequenced alongside the crosslinked peptide using a specialized MS strategy. For RNA sequence assignment, we further introduce the computational tool SALT, which identified peptide-RNA sequence pairs for over 1,600 crosslinks in a single LC-MS run. Together, pepR-SALT provides a framework for mapping protein-RNA interfaces across the proteome and transcriptome at single-amino acid and nucleotide resolution.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2025

Enhanced photo-crosslinking in living cells with high-intensity longwave ultraviolet light

The activation of chemical reactions in living cells using ultraviolet (UV) light enables the interrogation of biomolecules in their native environment with photoreactive probes or crosslinking reagents. Although numerous photo-crosslinking approaches have been successfully employed, they often suffer from common limitations, including low reaction yields, the need for long exposure times, and irradiation-induced cellular damage from heat, desiccation, or side reactions. We recently showed that 365 nm light-emitting diodes (LEDs) enable rapid, bioorthogonal protein-DNA crosslinking in living cells, incurring minimal photodamage. Here we generalize this approach and demonstrate that high-intensity, longwave UV light reduces the irradiation time for in-cell photo-crosslinking reactions by up to 1000-fold, allowing protein-drug, protein-protein, protein-DNA and protein-RNA interactions to be fixed within seconds. Benchmarking this rapid photo-activation for the analysis of RNA-interacting proteomes responding to RNA-binding drugs, we demonstrate both qualitative and quantitative advantages of controlled, high-intensity UV irradiation, uncovering emergent experimental opportunities that were previously inaccessible to light-activated chemistry in intact cells and tissues.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2024

Mapping the Human Proteome with Physical Access to DNA

In a human cell, DNA is packed in histones, RNA, and chromatin-associated proteins, forming a cohesive gel. At any given moment, only a specific subset of the proteome has physical access to the DNA and organizes its structure, transcription, replication, repair and other molecular functions essential to the way the genome is read and maintained. We have developed a zero-distance photo-crosslinking approach to quantify proteins in direct contact with DNA in living cells. Collecting DNA interactomes from human breast cancer cells, we present an atlas of over one thousand proteins with physical access to DNA, and hundreds of peptide-nucleotide crosslinks pinpointing protein-DNA interfaces with single amino-acid resolution. Differential comparisons of DNA interactomes from cells undergoing treatment with estrogen or genotoxic chemotherapy recapitulated the recruitment of key transcription factors and DNA damage proteins. This opens a direct way to explore genomic regulation in a hypothesis-free manner, applicable to many organisms and systems.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2022

PEPseq Quantifies Transcriptome-Wide Changes in Protein Occupancy and Reveals Selective Translational Repression After Translational Stress

Post-transcriptional gene regulation is accomplished by the interplay of the transcriptome with RNA-binding proteins, which occurs in a dynamic manner in response to altered cellular conditions. Recording the combined occupancy of all proteins binding to the transcriptome offers the opportunity to interrogate if a particular treatment leads to any interaction changes, pointing to sites in RNA that undergo post-transcriptional regulation. Here, we establish a method to monitor protein occupancy in a transcriptome-wide fashion by RNA sequencing. To this end, peptide-enhanced pull-down for RNA sequencing (or PEPseq) uses metabolic RNA labelling with 4-thiouridine (4SU) for light-induced protein-RNA crosslinking, and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) chemistry to isolate protein-crosslinked RNA fragments across all long RNA biotypes. We use PEPseq to investigate changes in protein occupancy during the onset of arsenite-induced translational stress in human cells and reveal evidence for ribosome stalling and depletion from stress granules for a distinct set of mRNAs, many coding for ribosomal proteins. We use quantitative proteomics to demonstrate that translation of these mRNAs remains repressed during the initial hours of recovery after arsenite stress. Thus, we present PEPseq as a discovery platform for the unbiased investigation of post-transcriptional regulation.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2022

Translational Activity Controls Ribophagic Flux and Turnover of Distinct Ribosome Pools

Ribosomes are among the most abundant and complex machineries in the cell, however, the turnover of their subunits remains poorly understood. Here, we apply proteomic flux and cryo-electron microscopy analyses to interrogate the ribosome life cycle in human cells. We show that subpopulations of ribosomal subunits coexist, which vary in turnover kinetics and structure. Specifically, 80S ribosomes have a much longer half-life than free 40S and 60S ribosomal subunits, indicating that they represent distinct subunit pools that poorly intermix. Translation inhibition starkly increases the pool-size of 80S ribosomes in a translationally idle state and induces ribophagy of old ribosomes, ultimately rejuvenating the ribosome fleet. Our findings provide a comprehensive model for ribosome turnover and its regulation via translational activity.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2018

The Human RNA-Binding Proteome and Its Dynamics During Arsenite-Induced Translational Arrest

Proteins and RNA functionally and physically intersect in multiple biological processes, however, currently no universal method is available to purify protein-RNA complexes. Here we introduce XRNAX, a method for the generic purification of protein-crosslinked RNA, and demonstrate its versatility to study the composition and dynamics of protein-RNA interactions by various transcriptomic and proteomic approaches. We show that XRNAX captures all RNA biotypes, and use this to characterize the sub-proteomes that interact with coding and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), and to identify hundreds of protein-RNA interfaces. Exploiting the quantitative nature of XRNAX, we observe drastic remodeling of the RNA-bound proteome during arsenite-induced stress, distinct from autophagy-induced changes in the total proteome. In addition, we combine XRNAX with CLIP-seq to validate the interaction of ncRNA with Lamin B and EXOSC2. Thus, XRNAX is a resourceful approach to study structural and compositional aspects of protein-RNA interactions to address fundamental questions in RNA-biology.

molecular biology↗