A computational platform for high-throughput analysis of RNA sequences and modifications by mass spectrometry.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32066737.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-14665-7 and PMC identifier 7026122.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The field of epitranscriptomics continues to reveal how post-transcriptional modification of RNA affects a wide variety of biological phenomena. A pivotal challenge in this area is the identification of modified RNA residues within their sequence contexts. Mass spectrometry (MS) offers a comprehensive solution by using analogous approaches to shotgun proteomics. However, software support for the analysis of RNA MS data is inadequate at present and does not allow high-throughput processing. Existing software solutions lack the raw performance and statistical grounding to efficiently handle the numerous modifications found on RNA. We present a free and open-source database search engine for RNA MS data, called NucleicAcidSearchEngine (NASE), that addresses these shortcomings. We demonstrate the capability of NASE to reliably identify a wide range of modified RNA sequences in four original datasets of varying complexity. In human tRNA, we characterize over 20 different modification types simultaneously and find many cases of incomplete modification.
Medical subject headings
- Epigenomics
- High-Throughput Screening Assays
- RNA Processing, Post-Transcriptional
- Search Engine
- Tandem Mass Spectrometry