Tissue-specific changes in the RNA structurome mediate salinity response in Arabidopsis

  1. Sarah M. Assmann1,4
  1. 1Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
  2. 2Department of Chemistry, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
  3. 3Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
  4. 4Center for RNA Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
  5. 5Spectrum Health Office of Research, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503, USA
  1. Corresponding authors: pcb5{at}psu.edu, sma3{at}psu.edu, david.tack{at}spectrumhealth.org
  1. 6 These authors contributed equally to this work.

  • 7 Present address: Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, Missouri 63132, USA

Abstract

Little is known concerning the effects of abiotic factors on in vivo RNA structures. We applied Structure-seq to assess the in vivo mRNA structuromes of Arabidopsis thaliana under salinity stress, which negatively impacts agriculture. Structure-seq utilizes dimethyl sulfate reactivity to identify As and Cs that lack base-pairing or protection. Salt stress refolded transcripts differentially in root versus shoot, evincing tissue specificity of the structurome. Both tissues exhibited an inverse correlation between salt stress-induced changes in transcript reactivity and changes in abundance, with stress-related mRNAs showing particular structural dynamism. This inverse correlation is more pronounced in mRNAs wherein the mean reactivity of the 5′UTR, CDS, and 3′UTR concertedly change under salinity stress, suggesting increased susceptibility to abundance control mechanisms in transcripts exhibiting this phenomenon, which we name “concordancy.” Concordant salinity-induced increases in reactivity were notably observed in photosynthesis genes, thereby implicating mRNA structural loss in the well-known depression of photosynthesis by salt stress. Overall, changes in secondary structure appear to impact mRNA abundance, molding the functional specificity of the transcriptome under stress.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • Received August 11, 2019.
  • Accepted January 13, 2020.

This article, published in RNA, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

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