Profiling translation in the nervous system

Abstract

Regulation at the level of translation is critical in the nervous system, such as for the formation of cell-type-specific proteomes or plastic changes in neural circuits. Whilst current knowledge of the translatome is relatively limited compared to transcriptome, a growing array of tools to analyse translation is becoming available. In this review, we discuss techniques for profiling translation on a genome-wide scale with a special emphasis on cell-type-specific analyses in the nervous system. This includes polysome-profiling-seq, Translating Ribosome Affinity Purification (TRAP)-seq and ribosome profiling (Ribo-seq). We review recent advances to achieve spatial resolution of translatome analysis, such as genetic labelling of the targeted cells and cell sorting, and discuss the biological implications of translational regulation in the brain and potential future extensions.

Keywords: Ribo-seq; TRAP-seq; nervous system; polysome-profiling-seq; translatome.