Project description:This study explores whether HuD could bind to and regulate the expression circRNAs from genes associated with neuronal development and synaptic plasticity circRNAs bound to HuD were isolated from the striatum of HuD-OE mice by RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) as described in Bolognani et al, 2010 (https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkp863) using Dynabeads® (Thermo Fisher Scientific) coated with mouse monoclonal anti-myc tag antibody (9B11; Cell Signalling Technology Inc.) specifically recognizing myc-tagged HuD transgenic protein expressed in HuD-OE as described before (Bolognani et al., 2010; Zimmerman et al., 2020). Controls for RIP assays were performed using either non-immune IgG and HuD-OE tissue or the myc-tag antibody and wild type (WT) tissue.
Project description:Purpose: The goals of this study are to determine how deletion of the RNA-binding protein HuD affects the levels of microRNAs in the striatum of Elav4 (HuD) KO using miRNA-seq Methods: Total RNA from striatum of male adult Elavl4 (HuD) KO and wild-type (WT) littermates (n=3 per genotype) crossbred to C57Bl/6 for more than 10 generations were analyzed by small RNA sequencing, in triplicate, using an Illumina NextSeq platorm. The percentage of the number of bases with Q >30 for all 6 samples were >93%. Results: Using an optimized data analysis workflow (see diagram below), about 6.3 million sequence reads per HuD KO sample and 3.3 million per WT sample were mapped miRBase v22. The expression level (Reads count) of miRNAs were calculated using miRDeep2. The number of identified miRNA per group was calculated based on the mean of CPM in group > 1. Conclusions: We found 309 miRNAs from 54 unique families (FC>1.75- and p<0.05) were significantly upregulated while 161 miRNAs from 143 unique families (FC<0.55 and p<0.05) were significantly downregulated in the striatum of HuD KO mice vs WT samples.
Project description:Purpose: The goal of this study was to analyse RNA-seq data to determine the effect of deletion of the RNA-binding protein HuD in transcriptiome-wide alternative splicing and polyadenylation in the neocortex of adult HuD KO vs. wild type littermates (controls) Methods: Cortical mRNA profiles of adult HuD KO (Elavl4 -/-) mice and Control mice were generated by RNA sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform. The quality of raw RNA-sequencing reads was evaluated using FastQC software (version 0.11.5) and adapters were removed using the Cutadapt (version 1.15) and Trimmomatic (version 0.38) software. Alternative splicing was evaluated using rMATS software (version 4.0.2) and BAM files were converted to BedGraph before examining alternative polyadenylation using DaPars software (version 0.9.1) Methods (cont.): RNA-seq data was aligned to the M musculus genome (UCSC browser, mm10) using STAR (version 2.7.3a), and MultiQC (version 1.8) was used to perform a final quality check on STAR alignment files. If alignments were found to be the same read length and have >80% reads mapped to a unique location, the data was considered good quality and alternative splicing and polyadenylation analyses were performed. Sequence reads per sample were aligned to the mouse genome (build mm10). Results: HuD KO affected alternative splicing of 310 genes, including 17 validated HuD targets such as Cbx3, Cspp1, Snap25 and Gria2. In addition, deletion of HuD affected polyadenylation of 53 genes, with the majority of significantly altered mRNAs shifting towards usage of the proximal polyadenylation signal (PAS), resulting in shorter 3’ untranslated regions (3’ UTRs). Conclusions: HuD KO had a greater effect on alternative splicing than polyadenylation, with many of the affected genes implicated in several neuronal functions and neuropsychiatric disorders.