Pseudouridine in a new era of RNA modifications

Abstract

Two articles recently published in Nature and Cell report the first transcriptome-wide maps of pseudouridine (Ψ) at single-base resolution through selective chemical labeling, suggesting new mechanisms and functions of Ψ in mRNA and non-coding RNA molecules.

Figure 1

(A) The installation and functional roles of Ψ. Ψ is installed through either snoRNA-dependent (requires H/ACA RNP) or -independent mechanism (requires PUS family enzymes). Ψ can either change the RNA secondary structure or facilitate recoding during translation. Red codon: stop codon. RF: releasing factor. (B) A CMC labeling-based Ψ-sequencing strategy at single-base resolution. CMC selectively reacts with Ψ to form N3-CMC-Ψ, which blocks reverse transcription, thus enabling the identification of transcriptome-wide Ψ positions through deep sequencing.