决定RNA结合蛋白与其目标相互作用的RNA的序列和环境,过去往往是根据不同蛋白的情况逐一被研究的。现在,由Timothy Hughes及其同事所完成的一项研究,报告了对来自24种真核生物的超过200种RNA结合蛋白的结合点所做的一个全面分析。他们识别出了保守的RNA-结合主题,同时他们的分析也允许仅仅根据“RNA-结合域”来预测相互作用点。这些主题还被发现反映每个分子的功能,这将有助于了解以前未被定性的先例所起作用。(生物谷Bioon.com)
生物谷推荐英文摘要:
Nature doi:10.1038/nature12311
A compendium of RNA-binding motifs for decoding gene regulation
Debashish Ray, Hilal Kazan,Kate B. Cook, Matthew T. Weirauch,Hamed S. Najafabadi,Xiao Li,Serge Gueroussov,Mihai Albu,Hong Zheng, Ally Yang, Hong Na,Manuel Irimia,Leah H. Matzat,Ryan K. Dale,Sarah A. Smith,Christopher A. Yarosh, Seth M. Kelly,Behnam Nabet, Desirea Mecenas,Weimin Li,Rakesh S. Laishram, Mei Qiao, Howard D. Lipshitz, Fabio Piano,Anita H. Corbett et al.
RNA-binding proteins are key regulators of gene expression, yet only a small fraction have been functionally characterized. Here we report a systematic analysis of the RNA motifs recognized by RNA-binding proteins, encompassing 205 distinct genes from 24 diverse eukaryotes. The sequence specificities of RNA-binding proteins display deep evolutionary conservation, and the recognition preferences for a large fraction of metazoan RNA-binding proteins can thus be inferred from their RNA-binding domain sequence. The motifs that we identify in vitro correlate well with in vivo RNA-binding data. Moreover, we can associate them with distinct functional roles in diverse types of post-transcriptional regulation, enabling new insights into the functions of RNA-binding proteins both in normal physiology and in human disease. These data provide an unprecedented overview of RNA-binding proteins and their targets, and constitute an invaluable resource for determining post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms in eukaryotes.