Quantitative assessment of RNA-protein interactions with high-throughput sequencing-RNA affinity profiling

Nat Protoc. 2015 Aug;10(8):1212-33. doi: 10.1038/nprot.2015.074. Epub 2015 Jul 16.

Abstract

Because RNA-protein interactions have a central role in a wide array of biological processes, methods that enable a quantitative assessment of these interactions in a high-throughput manner are in great demand. Recently, we developed the high-throughput sequencing-RNA affinity profiling (HiTS-RAP) assay that couples sequencing on an Illumina GAIIx genome analyzer with the quantitative assessment of protein-RNA interactions. This assay is able to analyze interactions between one or possibly several proteins with millions of different RNAs in a single experiment. We have successfully used HiTS-RAP to analyze interactions of the EGFP and negative elongation factor subunit E (NELF-E) proteins with their corresponding canonical and mutant RNA aptamers. Here we provide a detailed protocol for HiTS-RAP that can be completed in about a month (8 d hands-on time). This includes the preparation and testing of recombinant proteins and DNA templates, clustering DNA templates on a flowcell, HiTS and protein binding with a GAIIx instrument, and finally data analysis. We also highlight aspects of HiTS-RAP that can be further improved and points of comparison between HiTS-RAP and two other recently developed methods, quantitative analysis of RNA on a massively parallel array (RNA-MaP) and RNA Bind-n-Seq (RBNS), for quantitative analysis of RNA-protein interactions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Base Sequence
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing*
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Proteins / metabolism
  • RNA / metabolism*

Substances

  • Proteins
  • RNA