Luzak, Vanessa and Osses, Esteban and Danese, Anna and Odendaal, Christoff and Cosentino, Raul O. and Stricker, Stefan H. and Haanstra, Jurgen R. and Erhard, Florian and Siegel, T. Nicolai (2025) SLAM-seq reveals independent contributions of RNA processing and stability to gene expression in African trypanosomes. NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH, 53 (3). ISSN 0305-1048, 1362-4962
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
Gene expression is a multi-step process that converts DNA-encoded information into proteins, involving RNA transcription, maturation, degradation, and translation. While transcriptional control is a major regulator of protein levels, the role of post-transcriptional processes such as RNA processing and degradation is less well understood due to the challenge of measuring their contributions individually. To address this challenge, we investigated the control of gene expression in Trypanosoma brucei, a unicellular parasite assumed to lack transcriptional control. Instead, mRNA levels in T. brucei are controlled by post-transcriptional processes, which enabled us to disentangle the contribution of both processes to total mRNA levels. In this study, we developed an efficient metabolic RNA labeling approach and combined ultra-short metabolic labeling with transient transcriptome sequencing (TT-seq) to confirm the long-standing assumption that RNA polymerase II transcription is unregulated in T. brucei. In addition, we established thiol (SH)-linked alkylation for metabolic sequencing of RNA (SLAM-seq) to globally quantify RNA processing rates and half-lives. Our data, combined with scRNA-seq data, indicate that RNA processing and stability independently affect total mRNA levels and contribute to the variability seen between individual cells in African trypanosomes.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | GENOME-WIDE ANALYSIS; BLOOD-STREAM FORMS; MESSENGER-RNA; BRUCEI; POLYADENYLATION; LIFE; IDENTIFICATION; TRANSLATION; DEGRADATION; SYSTEMS |
| Subjects: | 000 Computer science, information & general works > 004 Computer science 600 Technology > 610 Medical sciences Medicine |
| Divisions: | Informatics and Data Science > Department Computational Life Science > Chair of Computational Immunology (Prof. Dr. Florian Erhard) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 27 Jan 2026 10:01 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Jan 2026 10:01 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/65320 |
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