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The in vitro antitumor activity of oligonuclear polypyridyl rhodium and iridium complexes against cancer cells and human pathogens
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Live-cell mapping of organelle-associated
RNAs via proximity biotinylation
combined with protein-RNA crosslinking
Pornchai Kaewsapsak1,2,3,4†, David Michael Shechner5,6,7†‡, William Mallard5,6,7,
John L Rinn5,6,7§, Alice Y Ting1,2,3,4,7*
1
Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
United States; 2Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, United
States; 3Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, United States;
4
Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, United States;
5
Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University,
Cambridge, United States; 6Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard
University, Cambridge, United States; 7Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Harvard, Cambridge, United States
Abstract The spatial organization of RNA within cells is a crucial factor influencing a wide range
*For correspondence: ayting@
stanford.edu
†
These authors contributed
equally to this work
Present address: ‡Department
of Pharmacology, The University
of Washington, Washington,
United States; §Department of
Biochemistry, University of
Colorado BioFrontiers, Colorado,
United States
of biological functions throughout all kingdoms of life. However, a general understanding of RNA
localization has been hindered by a lack of simple, high-throughput methods for mapping the
transcriptomes of subcellular compartments. Here, we develop such a method, termed APEX-RIP,
which combines peroxidase-catalyzed, spatially restricted in situ protein biotinylation with RNAprotein chemical crosslinking. We demonstrate that, using a single protocol, APEX-RIP can isolate
RNAs from a variety of subcellular compartments, including the mitochondrial matrix, nucleus,
cytosol, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER), with specificity and sensitivity that rival or exceed those of
conventional approaches. We further identify candidate RNAs localized to mitochondria-ER
junctions and nuclear lamina, two compartments that are recalcitrant to classical biochemical
purification. Since APEX-RIP is simple, versatile, and does not require special instrumentation, we
envision its broad application in a variety of biological contexts.
Competing interests: The
authors declare that no
competing interests exist.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.001
Funding: See page 26
Introduction
Received: 02 June 2017
Accepted: 06 November 2017
Published: 14 December 2017
Reviewing editor: Elizabeth R
Gavis, Princeton University,
United States
Copyright Kaewsapsak et al.
This article is distributed under
the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use
and redistribution provided that
the original author and source are
credited.
Spatial compartmentalization of RNA is central to many biological processes across all kingdoms of
life, and enables diverse regulatory schemes that exploit both coding and noncoding functions of
the transcriptome. For example, the localization and spatially restricted translation of mRNA plays a
fundamental role in a wide variety of biological contexts, including asymmetric cell division in bacteria and yeast, body-pattern formation in Drosophila and Xenopus, and signaling at mammalian neuronal synapses (Jung et al., 2014). Moreover, the localization of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) can play
an architectural role in the assembly of subcellular structures, most notably within the nucleus,
wherein ncRNAs help to assemble short-range chromatin loops, higher-order chromatin domains,
and large sub-nuclear structures like nucleoli and Barr bodies, among others (Rinn and Guttman,
2014; Engreitz et al., 2016). However, despite these examples, our general understanding of the
breadth and biological significance of RNA subcellular localization remains inchoate.
Techniques that elucidate the subcellular localization of RNAs are therefore critical for advancing
our understanding of RNA biology. Classically, such techniques rely either on imaging or biochemical
Kaewsapsak et al. eLife 2017;6:e29224. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224
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fractionation. Imaging methods—such as Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) and RNA reporter
systems—are powerful tools for elucidating the positions of a small number of target RNAs at lowto-moderate throughput (Wilk et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2015; Paige et al., 2011; Hocine et al.,
2013; Nelles et al., 2016; Lécuyer et al., 2007; Garcia et al., 2007). Alternatively, unbiased
approaches for RNA discovery couple biochemical manipulations to microarray or deep sequencing
analysis. For example, the RNA partners of proteins with characteristic subcellular localization can be
identified through techniques that couple protein immunoprecipitation to RNA-Seq (Ule et al.,
2003; Gilbert et al., 2004). Such methods have revealed the localization of many mRNAs, in addition to discovering novel non-coding RNAs involved in RNA splicing (Chi et al., 2009) and RNAi
(Motamedi et al., 2004). On a broader scale, a deep sampling of RNAs residing within a cellular
compartment—for example, an intact organelle of interest, or partitions along a sucrose gradient—
can be identified by coupling subcellular fractionation to microarray analysis (Diehn et al., 2000,
2006; Marc et al., 2002; Sylvestre et al., 2003; Blower et al., 2007; Mili et al., 2008;
Pyhtila et al., 2008; Chen et al., 2011) or to RNA-Seq (‘Fractionation-Seq,’ Sterne-Weiler et al.,
2013; Mercer et al., 2011). These powerful methodologies facilitate a deep characterization of the
transcriptome of a subcellular target, in cases where a robust fractionation protocol for that target
can be developed, and can sometimes be applied to native cells or tissues (Diehn et al., 2006).
Despite this progress, some technological gaps exist among current methods for studying RNA
localization. Imaging approaches are of limited throughput, and may require specialized reagents,
constructs, or microscopes that are only accessible to a handful of laboratories (Wilk et al., 2016;
Chen et al., 2015; Paige et al., 2011; Hocine et al., 2013; Nelles et al., 2016). The efficacy of
immunoprecipitation-based approaches is highly sensitive to the antibodies and enrichment protocols used (Hendrickson et al., 2016) and captures only RNAs that are directly complexed with each
target protein. Fractionation-Seq is applicable only to organelles and subcellular fractions that can
be purified, and—like all fractionation-based methods—can be complicated by contaminants and
loss of material (Lesnik and Arava, 2014, Lomakin et al., 2007). Therefore, new technologies are
needed for unbiased and large-scale discovery and characterization of RNA neighborhoods, with
high spatial specificity, and within cellular structures that can be difficult to purify biochemically.
Here we introduce such a technology—termed APEX-RIP—that enables unbiased discovery of
endogenous RNAs in specific cellular locales. APEX-RIP merges two existing technologies: APEX
(engineered ascorbate peroxidase)-catalyzed proximity biotinylation of endogenous proteins
(Rhee et al., 2013), and RNA Immunoprecipitation (RIP; Gilbert et al., 2004). We demonstrate that
APEX-RIP is able to enrich endogenous RNAs in membrane-enclosed cellular organelles—such as
the mitochondrion and nucleus—and in membrane-abutting cellular regions—such as the cytosolic
face of the endoplasmic reticulum—although its applicability in completely unbounded compartments appears more limited. The specificity and sensitivity of this approach are higher than those
obtained by competing methods. Moreover, by applying APEX-RIP to multiple mammalian organelles, we have generated high quality datasets of compartmentalized RNAs that should serve as valuable resources for testing and generating novel hypotheses pertinent to RNA biology. Given its ease
of use and scalability across subcellular compartments, we anticipate that APEX-RIP will provide a
powerful new tool for the study of RNA localization.
Results
Development of APEX-RIP and its application to mitochondria
APEX is an engineered peroxidase that can be targeted by genetic fusion to various subcellular
regions of interest (Rhee et al., 2013) (Figure 1A). Upon addition of its substrates—biotin-phenol
(BP) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)—to live cells, APEX catalyzes the formation of biotin-phenoxyl
radicals that then diffuse outward and covalently biotinylate nearby endogenous proteins. More distal proteins are not significantly labeled because the biotin-phenoxyl radical has a half-life of less
than one millisecond (Wishart and Madhava Rao, 2010). Previous work has shown that APEX-catalyzed proximity biotinylation, coupled to streptavidin enrichment and mass spectrometry, can generate proteomic maps of the mitochondrial matrix, intermembrane space, outer membrane, and
nucleoid, each with <5 nm spatial specificity (Rhee et al., 2013; Hung et al., 2014,
2017; Han et al., 2017).
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Figure 1. APEX-RIP in mitochondria. (A) Overview of the APEX-RIP workflow. Live cells expressing APEX2 (grey ‘pacmen’) targeted to the compartment
of interest (here, the mitochondrial matrix) are incubated with the APEX substrate biotin-phenol (BP; red B: biotin). A one-minute pulse of H2O2 initiates
biotinylation of proximal endogenous proteins (Rhee et al., 2013), which are subsequently crosslinked to nearby RNAs by 0.1% formaldehyde.
Following cell lysis, biotinylated species are enriched by streptavidin pulldown, and coeluting RNAs are analyzed by qRT-PCR or RNA-Seq. IMM: inner
mitochondrial membrane. (B) Imaging APEX2 biotinylation in situ. HEK 293T cells expressing V5-tagged mito-APEX2 were biotinylated using the APEXRIP workflow, fixed, and stained as indicated. The bottom row is a negative control in which H2O2 treatment was omitted. Scale bars, 10 mm. TOM20 is
a mitochondrial outer membrane protein; neutravidin staining detects biotinylation. (C) In situ biotinylation of the mitochondrial matrix proteome
Figure 1 continued on next page
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Figure 1 continued
requires mito-APEX2, BP, and H2O2. Streptavidin blot analysis of whole cell lysates prepared following the protocol described in (A), or after omitting
components of the APEX reaction. Arrowheads denote endogenous biotinylated proteins (Chapman-Smith and Cronan, 1999). Anti-V5 blot (bottom)
detects expression of mito-APEX2. (D–E) mito-APEX-RIP efficiently recovers the mitochondrial transcriptome. (D) Gene-level RNA-Seq analysis of mitoAPEX-RIP; data are the average values of three experimental replicates. Fold change is defined as (FPKMpost-enrichment/FPKMpre-enrichment); dashed lines
indicate significance thresholds for fold enrichment (determined by ROC analysis, see Materials and methods) and p-values calculated by CuffDiff2
(Trapnell et al., 2013). Mitochondrial genomes encode 13 mRNAs, two rRNAs and 22 tRNAs (red). Note that three mitochondrial tRNA genes, MT-TH,
MT-TL2, and MT-TG, were also enriched. See Supplementary file 1A. (E) Nucleotide-level RNA-Seq analysis of mito-APEX-RIP, mapped to the human
mitochondrial genome (innermost circle). Outermost circle: reads from the full APEX-RIP protocol; middle circle: reads from the negative control. Note
the enrichment of several mitochondrially-encoded tRNAs and the D-loop leader transcript. Ribosomal RNAs were removed during library preparation
(see Materials and methods). See also: Figure 1—figure supplements 1,2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.002
The following figure supplements are available for figure 1:
Figure supplement 1. Optimization of APEX-RIP protocol.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.003
Figure supplement 2. Reproducibility of the mito-APEX2 RIP experiment.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.004
Because most cellular RNAs exist in close proximity to proteins, we reasoned that APEX-tagged
subcellular proteomes could also provide access to the nearby subcellular transcriptomes by crosslinking labeled proteins and RNA together in situ (Figure 1A). As our first target organelle for this
approach, we selected the mitochondrion because its RNA content—derived from both the mitochondrial genome and from imported, nuclear-encoded RNAs—has been extensively characterized
by a wide array of complementary methods (Mercer et al., 2011; Alán et al., 2010; Piechota et al.,
2006; Ro et al., 2013), hence providing a ‘gold-standard’ to which we can compare our results. The
mitochondrial matrix was also the first mammalian compartment mapped by APEX proteomics methodology (Rhee et al., 2013). As an RNA-protein chemical crosslinker, we opted for mild formaldehyde treatment, which covalently captures most protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid
interactions, and can be achieved with minimal disruption of native interactions in live cells. It is for
these reasons that formaldehyde is used in several RIP technologies aimed at identifying the RNA
partners of specific proteins of interest, including our own ‘fRIP-Seq’ protocol (Chris and Svejstrup,
2006, Hendrickson et al., 2016).
Since it was unclear a priori whether APEX-catalyzed biotinylation should precede or follow the
formaldehyde crosslinking step, we explored both schemes in parallel (Figure 1—figure supplement 1A; see Materials and methods). Each protocol, applied to HEK 293T cells that transiently
expressed mitochondrially-localized APEX (‘mito-APEX,’ Supplementary file 5A), resulted in clear
enrichment of fifteen mitochondrial-encoded RNAs—relative to the cytosolic marker GAPDH—as
gauged by qRT–PCR (average of 49.3 ± 3.5 and 60.9 ± 4.1 fold enrichment, respectively, Figure 1—
figure supplement 1A). We next proceeded to RNA-Seq analysis, assuming that fixing cells prior to
biotinylation would better capture transient or weak RNA–protein interactions, and therefore selecting the crosslinking-then-BP protocol (see Materials and methods). However, since it was unknown
whether biotin-phenoxyl radicals might cleave or modify RNA in a manner that introduces bias into
deep-sequencing libraries (Ziehler and Engelke, 2000), we chose to prepare these libraries using
the ‘Ribo-Zero’ method, which physically removes ribosomal RNAs prior to fragmentation and
sequencing adaptor ligation (Materials and methods). Since this workflow does not require the presence of a 3´–poly(A) tail for first-strand synthesis, it offers superior coverage in cases with lower input
quality (Adiconis et al., 2013), and furthermore enables sampling of a broader range of RNA
classes.
Deep-sequencing of mito-APEX-RIP libraries confirmed that mitochondrial mRNAs were substantially enriched over the majority of nuclear-encoded genes. However, a sizeable ‘shoulder’—comprising a number of conspicuous off-target RNAs—was also unexpectedly observed (Figure 1—figure
supplement 1B,C). To address this issue, we re-examined our labeling and crosslinking protocols,
using a sampling of these off-target RNA markers (e.g., the abundant nuclear RNA XIST, and cytosol-localized RNAs HOOK2 and MAN2C1) as more incisive negative controls. We furthermore
employed HEK293T cells that stably expressed mitochondrially-localized APEX2 (mito-APEX2,
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Figure 1B–C, Supplementary file 5A-B), a more active APEX variant that we hypothesized might
improve target enrichment (Lam et al., 2015). This improved construct, and more controlled analysis
revealed that APEX labeling followed by crosslinking provides superior specificity, improving the
average enrichment of target RNAs—relative to the contaminant RNAs identified above—by nearly
ten-fold (Figure 1—figure supplement 1C). We suspect that the mild formaldehyde treatment compromises membrane integrity (Fox et al., 1985), allowing BP radicals to escape to adjoining compartments when APEX labeling is performed after, rather than before, formaldehyde treatment.
Using the optimized APEX-first/crosslinking-second protocol, we then mapped the mitochondrial
transcriptome of mito-APEX2-expressing HEK 293T cells by RNA-Seq (Figure 1D,
Supplementary file 1B). Gene-level analysis comparing fold enrichment and statistical significance
of all human genes (Materials and methods) revealed that all 13 mRNAs and both rRNAs encoded
by the mitochondrial genome were highly enriched (greater than 11-fold; Figure 1D and Figure 1—
figure supplement 2, Supplementary file 1A). Surprisingly, we even observed the enrichment of
several mitochondrial-encoded tRNAs, although our library preparation workflow generally excluded
such smaller RNA species (Figure 1D). Read density plots mapped to the mitochondrial genome
demonstrated that most of our captured RNAs correspond to fully-processed transcripts, including
mRNAs, interstitial tRNAs, and the D-loop leader sequence from which mitochondrial transcription
initiates (Figure 1E). Intriguingly, mito-mRNA read densities appeared to correlate with previous
measures of mRNA half-life (Nagao et al., 2008). For example, mRNAs encoding MTCO1-3 have
longer half-lives, and more reads from APEX-RIP, than mRNAs encoding MTND1-2. We therefore
conclude that APEX-RIP is a specific and sensitive approach for mapping the transcriptome within a
membrane-bound organelle.
APEX-RIP mapping of nuclear-cytoplasmic RNA distribution
Having established that APEX-RIP in the mitochondrion, we next turned our attention to a more
challenging compartment: the mammalian nucleus. The nucleus is more complex and has a less welldefined transcriptome than the mitochondrial matrix, but previous Fractionation-Seq datasets from
HEK 293T (Sultan et al., 2014) again provide a reference list to which we can compare our results.
We generated HEK 293T cells that stably express APEX2 in the nucleus (APEX-NLS) or in the cytosol (APEX-NES, where NES is a Nuclear Export Signal) (Supplementary file 5A). The specificity of in
situ biotinylation by these constructs within each compartment was confirmed by imaging
(Figure 2A, Supplementary file 5B). Whole cell lysates prepared from each cell line also produced
distinct ‘fingerprints’ of biotinylated proteins, as assayed by streptavidin blotting (Figure 2—figure
supplement 1).
We performed APEX-RIP on both APEX-NLS and APEX-NES cells, using the biotinylation-first/
crosslinking-second protocol established above, with an additional one-minute radical-quenching
step in between the APEX and crosslinking steps (Figure 2—figure supplement 2; see Materials
and methods). Encouragingly, ‘gold standard’ nuclear and cytosolic RNAs were enriched from the
corresponding cell lines as predicted: long non-coding RNAs, which are predominantly nuclear, were
enriched in APEX-NLS-RIP and de-enriched in APEX-NES-RIP (Figure 2B, top), while endoplasmic
reticulum-proximal mRNAs (Jan et al., 2014) exhibited the converse profile (Figure 2B middle). As a
further test, we directly compared the enrichments from APEX2-NLS and APEX2-NES to one
another, confirming that they had effectively parsed known nuclear- and cytosol-localized RNAs into
the expected compartments (Figure 2B bottom and C). We used Receiver Operating Characteristic
(ROC) analysis to obtain final transcript lists of 5740 nuclear RNAs and 5367 cytosolic RNAs, with
observed contamination frequencies (i.e. the ratio of enriched off-target RNAs to total enriched
RNAs) of <1.6% and <1.5%, respectively (Supplementary file 2A-C, Figure 2—figure supplement
3A–B, see Materials and methods).
Surprisingly, we also observed sizeable populations of RNAs exhibiting noncanonical nuclear–
cytoplasmic partitioning. 3161 mRNAs—including C1orf63, for example (Figure 2D, top right)—
appeared preferentially nuclear. Many of these species have been proposed to play a role in dampening gene expression noise (Bahar Halpern et al., 2015). Conversely, 81 lncRNAs appeared preferentially cytoplasmic (Figure 2D, bottom left); these include the known cytoplasmic lncRNA SNHG5,
a modulator of staufen-mediated decay that influences colorectal tumor growth (Derrien et al.,
2012; Damas et al., 2016) (Figure 2D, bottom right). We were concerned that this atypical RNA
localization might be artifactual, since diffusion of proteins between subcellular compartments
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Figure 2. APEX-RIP mapping of the nuclear-cytoplasmic RNA distribution. (A) Fluorescence imaging of nuclear and cytosol-targeted APEX2 fusion
constructs. HEK 293T cells expressing the indicated constructs (‘NLS,’ nuclear localization signal; ‘NES,’ nuclear export signal) were labeled with biotinphenol, crosslinked and stained as indicated. Scale bars, 10 mm. DAPI is nuclear stain. (B) APEX-RIP recovers known nuclear and cytosolic standard
RNAs, defined here as long noncoding RNAs (nuclear markers, blue) and RNAs proximal to the Endoplasmic Reticulum (cytoplasmic markers,red—
Figure 2 continued on next page
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Figure 2 continued
defined by (Jan et al., 2014), with measured p-values0.05—see Materials and methods). Top: APEX2–NLS-RIP enriches nuclear standards. Middle:
APEX2–NES-RIP enriches cytoplasmic standards. Bottom: Combined analysis of the APEX2–NLS and APEX2–NES RIP experiments distinguish the two
classes. Fold changes are defined as (FPKMpost-enrichment/FPKMpre-enrichment); combined fold change as [FPKMNLS–post-enrichment /FPKMNES–post-enrichment].
Dotted line indicates the significance threshold for nuclear localization. (C) Global analysis of nuclear and cytoplasmic RNA localization by combined
APEX2-NLS and APEX2-NES RIP. Vertical dashed lines indicate the cutoffs for nuclear and cytosolic RNAs. Horizontal dash line indicates p-value=0.05.
Top histogram illustrates the distribution of RNAs with p-value=510 5, which are boxed in gray in the scatter plot. The average of data from three
biological replicates are shown. See Supplementary file 2A-B. (D) APEX-RIP reveals classes of RNAs with canonical and noncanonical nuclearcytoplasmic distributions. Left: the same data as in (C), separately parsed into mRNAs (top) and lncRNAs (bottom). Right: read density plots of example
RNAs from each class that exhibit stereotypical and atypical localization. EEF1A1 and C1orf63 are mRNAs; XIST and SNHG5 are lncRNAs. For each
gene, a common y-scale is used for all read tracks. SnoRNAs encoded in the SNHG5 gene body are indicated as gray rectangles. (E) Venn diagrams
comparing APEX-RIP and fractionation-based RNA datasets (Sultan et al., 2014). (F) Nuclear APEX-RIP is more sensitive than is biochemical
fractionation. Left: Specificity of the APEX-RIP and nuclear RNA datasets (Sultan et al., 2014). Off-target RNAs were defined as actively translated ERproximal mRNAs (Jan et al., 2014). Right: Recall of nuclear standard RNAs, defined as a set of 827 lncRNAs annotated by GENCODE hg19 with
average pre-enrichment FPKM 1.0. See also: Figure 2—figure supplements 1–2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.005
The following figure supplements are available for figure 2:
Figure supplement 1. Characterization of APEX2 fusion constructs.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.006
Figure supplement 2. Reproducibility of nuclear–cytoplasmic APEX-RIP experiments.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.007
Figure supplement 3. Precision and specificity of nuclear–cytoplasmic APEX-RIP, and its comparison to subcellular fractionation.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.008
during a ten-minute formaldehyde treatment might allow aberrant RNA-protein interactions to be
chemically crosslinked. To rule out this possibility, we monitored the localization of APEX-labeled
species during the course of a BP-first/crosslink-second NLS-APEX2-RIP experiment, and failed to
observe significant migration of biotinylated proteins from the nucleus into the cytosol (Figure 2—
figure supplement 3C).
Our APEX-RIP nuclear and cytosolic RNA lists provide an opportunity for a head-to-head comparison with the traditional Fractionation-Seq method for mapping subcellular RNA localization. ROC
analysis of HEK 293T fractionation-Seq data obtained using library synthesis and sequencing protocols very similar to our own (see Materials and methods, Sultan et al., 2014) yielded 5363 nuclear
RNAs and 5011 cytosolic RNAs enriched by fractionation (Figure 2—figure supplement 3D–G;
Supplementary file 2D-F). Of these RNAs, 63% (3358) were also enriched in our APEX-RIP nuclear
dataset, implying general agreement between the two technologies (Figure 2E). Notably, APEX-RIP
also enriched nearly 2400 additional transcripts. These may be nuclear-localized RNAs that were
opaque to the fractionation protocol, or contaminants enriched by APEX-RIP. To address this latter
possibility, we examined each dataset for conspicuous non-nuclear contaminants: RNAs that are
known to be localized at the Endoplasmic Reticulum (Jan et al., 2014). Satisfyingly, each nuclear
dataset exhibited similarly low levels of ER contaminants (1.6% and 1.3%, respectively, Figure 2F,
left).
To compare the coverage, or sensitivity, of each method (sometimes termed recall), we examined
the enrichment in each dataset of lncRNAs, which are thought to be predominantly nuclear
(Derrien et al., 2012). We assembled a list of 827 annotated lncRNAs (GENCODE v19) with average
pre-enrichment FPKM greater than 1.0 (Supplementary file 2G). Of these lncRNAs, 53.6% are
enriched in our APEX-RIP-derived nuclear dataset, while nuclear Fractionation-Seq from the same
cell line enriched only 42.2% (Figure 2F, right). We conclude that APEX-RIP rivals or outperforms
Fractionation-Seq in terms of both specificity and coverage, for analysis of endogenous RNA subcellular localization.
Enrichment of RNAs proximal to the ER membrane
Having established that APEX-RIP can enrich RNAs in membrane-enclosed cellular compartments,
we next sought to address whether the technique could successfully capture the transcriptomes of
‘open’ subcellular regions. Previous proteomic work has shown that APEX tagging exhibits sufficient
spatial specificity for such open compartments, since this technology has produced highly specific
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proteomic maps of, for example, the mammalian neuronal synaptic cleft (Loh et al., 2016), outer
mitochondrial membrane (Hung et al., 2017), mitochondrial nucleoid (Han et al., 2017), and G-protein coupled receptor interaction networks (Lobingier et al., 2017; Paek et al., 2017). We were
unsure, however, if the additional formaldehyde crosslinking step would preserve or blur the estimated <5 nanometer spatial resolution of APEX labeling.
As a test case for the generality of APEX-RIP at such open compartments, we selected the Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER). The ER is an appealing target for several reasons. First, it is host to a known
set of characteristic RNAs that we can use as positive controls—the so-called ‘secretome’—which
comprises mRNAs encoding secreted, glycosylated, and/or transmembrane proteins that are translated on the rough ER. Second, the ER provides the opportunity to compare the efficacy of APEXRIP to alternative approaches, since RNAs in this subcellular locale have been previously characterized both by Fractionation-Seq, and by a newer methodology termed proximity-dependent ribosome profiling (Jan et al., 2014; Williams et al., 2014). This latter technique maps active protein
translation at the ER membrane by combining ribosome profiling (Ingolia et al., 2009) with proximity-restricted sequence-specific biotinylation, using an ER-targeted biotin ligase and ribosomes that
are tagged with the peptide substrate (AviTag) of that ligase. Although the library preparation protocols used in each of these studies varied significantly from our own (see Materials and methods),
by focusing our analyses on the fold enrichment of transcripts between matched input and ER-bound
samples—and not on absolute transcript abundances—we hoped to control for these differences.
Since it was initially unclear which face of the ER membrane (cytosolic or luminal) would be most
amenable to the APEX-RIP method, we generated fusion constructs that localized the peroxidase
catalytic center to each (Figure 3A–B, Supplementary file 5A). ERM-APEX2 targets APEX2 to the
ER cytosolic surface via a 27-amino acid fragment derived from the native ER membrane (ERM) protein cytochrome P450 C1. HRP-KDEL targets horseradish peroxidase (HRP) to the ER lumen via an
N-terminal ER-targeting signal and a C-terminal KDEL ER-retention motif (Martell et al., 2012). We
have shown that HRP catalyzes the same proximity-dependent biotinylation chemistry as APEX2
(Loh et al., 2016), but has higher specific activity than APEX2 in the ER lumen (Lam et al., 2015).
We generated HEK 293T cells stably expressing ERM-APEX2 and HRP-KDEL, and confirmed by
microscopy and streptavidin blotting that each produced the expected labeling patterns (Figure 3C
and D, Figure 2—figure supplement 1; Supplementary file 5B. see also Hung et al., 2017),
Figure 1D). Next, we compared the efficacy of each construct for target RNA isolation, using the
biotinylation-first/crosslinking-second APEX-RIP protocol, and analyzing our results via qRT-PCR
analysis of established secretome and non-secretome mRNAs (Jan et al., 2014). Parallel experiments
with APEX2-NES cells served as negative controls (Figure 3E, Supplementary file 5C).
Intriguingly, while APEX-RIP from HRP-KDEL cells efficiently enriched target secretome mRNAs
relative to non-target controls (average fold enrichment = 19.5, two-tailed t-test p-value = 0.00009),
parallel experiments in ERM-APEX2 cells exhibited only modest, qualitative enrichment of target
species (average fold enrichment = 1.49, two-tailed t-test p-value = 0.0515). Indeed, results from
ERM-APEX2 cells were nearly indistinguishable from those acquired from APEX2-NES control cells
(Student’s two-tailed t-test comparing the two constructs p-value = 0.830, Figure 3E, right). This is
surprising since proteomic experiments in HEK 293T cells expressing the identical ERM-APEX2 construct yielded highly specific enrichment of ER-localized proteins (Hung et al., 2017).
Our data strongly imply that APEX-RIP does not have the same spatial specificity as peroxidasecatalyzed proteomic labeling, and may be limited by perturbations induced by formaldehyde crosslinking. However, we were highly encouraged by the data obtained with the HRP-KDEL construct,
which we ascribe to the lower diffusion rates of both proteins and biotin-phenoxyl radicals when constrained within the limits of the ER lumen. We thus hypothesize that APEX-RIP with this construct is
effective because formaldehyde crosslinking physically couples RNAs on the cytosolic face of the ER
to protein complexes that are biotinylated within the ER lumen, thereby allowing target RNAs to be
enriched by streptavidin (Figure 3A). Furthermore, we observed that the target specificity of this
approach could be greatly improved by addition of a one-minute radical-quenching step in between
the biotinylation and crosslinking steps in our protocol (Figure 3—figure supplement 1A). We surmise that this additional step prevents residual peroxidase-generated radicals from leaking into
adjoining compartments when the integrity of the ER membrane is compromised during formaldehyde treatment.
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Figure 3. APEX-RIP at the Endoplasmic Reticulum membrane. (A—B) Schematics summarizing alternating ER-targeting strategies. (A) HRP, targeted to
the ER lumen with a KDEL sequence, biotinylates proteins within the ER. Red B: biotin. Red X’s: chemical crosslinks induced by 0.1% formaldehyde
treatment. Note that RNAs enriched by this approach may reside at the cytosolic face of the ER, or at the nuclear lamina, as shown. (B) APEX2, targeted
to the ER membrane (ERM) by fusing it to the transmembrane segment of rabbit P450 C1, biotinylates proteins proximal to the cytosolic face of the ER.
Figure 3 continued on next page
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Figure 3 continued
(C) Imaging of biotinylation from HRP-KDEL and ERM-APEX2 catalyzed reactions. HEK293T cells stably expressing HRP-KDEL or ERM-APEX2 were
labeled with BP, fixed and imaged as in Figure 1B. Scale bars, 10 mm. Anti-RCN2 was used to mark ER lumen. (D) Streptavidin blot detection of
resident ER proteins biotinylated by HRP-KDEL, as in Figure 1C. Arrowheads denote endogenously biotinylated proteins (Chapman-Smith and
Cronan, 1999). (E) qRT-PCR analysis, comparing the specificities of the labeling schemes shown in (A–B). Target and off-target genes were selected
using previously-reported RNA abundances at the ER membrane (Jan et al., 2014). Cytosolic APEX2 (APEX2–NES, as in Figure 2) serves as a negative
control. Data are the mean of four replicates ± one standard deviation. Significance testing: Student’s two-tailed t-test.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.009
The following figure supplements are available for figure 3:
Figure supplement 1. Further optimization of the APEX-RIP protocol; additional HRP-KDEL RIP data.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.010
Figure supplement 2. Additional analysis comparing HRP-KDEL RIP data and other ER-RNA data sets.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.011
Using this improved protocol, we performed APEX-RIP on HRP-KDEL cells (Figure 3—figure supplement 1B–C, Supplementary file 3B). Gene-level analysis, comparing RNA counts before and
after streptavidin pulldown, revealed that the majority (72%) of secretome mRNAs expressed in our
cells (defined by ER-proximal RNAs (Jan et al., 2014) and Phobius-predicted mRNAs with exclusion
of nuclear-encoded mitochondrial mRNAs, see Materials and methods) were enriched, while mRNAs
in a test set of known non-secreted genes were not enriched, thus demonstrating the ability of our
method to isolate ER-associated transcripts from the larger population of cellular RNAs (Figure 4A).
Using p-values and ROC analysis, we determined the optimal log2 fold change significance threshold
(Figure 3—figure supplement 1D–F; see Materials and methods), obtaining a final list of 2672 ERassociated RNAs that were significantly enriched in multiple experiments (Figure 4B;
Supplementary file 3A). We did not detect any obvious trend among the 28% of expressed secretome mRNAs that were not represented in this list. However, this dataset exhibited 96.5% specificity, based on previous secretory annotation as defined by GOCC, SignalP, TMHMM, or Phobius
(Ashburner et al., 2000; Petersen et al., 2011; Krogh et al., 2001; Käll et al., 2004), while mRNAs
lacking such signals were concomitantly depleted (Figure 4C). Coverage was likewise exceptional
(97%), as gauged by the successful recall of 71 mRNAs encoding well-established ER resident proteins (Figure 4D, Supplementary file 3E; see Materials and methods).
We next compared the KDEL-APEX-RIP ER-associated RNA dataset to analogous results obtained
by subcellular biochemical fractionation (Reid and Nicchitta, 2012), and by proximity-dependent
ribosome profiling (Jan et al., 2014) (Supplementary file 3C-D, respectively). Encouragingly, KDELAPEX-RIP captures the majority of RNAs enriched by each of these alternative techniques (69% and
97%, respectively, Figure 4E), implying broad agreement between the different methodologies. To
examine this further, we quantified the specificity and coverage of each approach, as above (see
Materials and methods). Specificity analysis demonstrated that APEX-RIP and ribosome profiling
exhibited similarly high specificity (96.5% and 99.2%, respectively). However, Fractionation-Seq was
substantially noisier, such that only 91% of enriched mRNAs bore a secretory annotation
(Figure 4C); the remaining 9% comprised sizeable populations of conspicuous contaminants (Figure 3—figure supplement 2A). The coverage of ER-localized mRNAs retrieved by APEX-RIP (97%)
was also considerably higher than those retrieved by both Fractionation-Seq and ribosome profiling
(73% and 70%, respectively, Figure 4D). We attribute the enhanced coverage of APEX-RIP to its
higher sensitivity, since this method appears better suited for capturing RNAs with lower abundances than the alternative approaches. Of the transcripts enriched by Frac-Seq or ribosome profiling,
95% have input abundances of 3.68 and 6.49 FPKM or higher, respectively, whereas those enriched
by APEX-RIP have an analogous lower expression limit of 0.42 FPKM (Figure 3—figure supplement
2B). Such higher sensitivity may also explain why the set of RNAs enriched by APEX-RIP is so much
larger than those obtained by fractionation and ribosome-profiling (Figure 4E). Excitingly, this further underscores the ability of APEX-RIP to recover RNAs that are opaque to other methods. While
the vast majority (93.3%) of our enriched RNAs are mRNAs, we also enrich dozens of noncoding
RNA species—including antisense RNAs and lincRNAs (Figure 4B). These RNAs are not translated,
and thus cannot be detected by ribosome profiling, and tend to be lowly expressed, making them
difficult targets for either ribosome profiling or Fractionation-Seq (Figure 3—figure supplement
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Figure 4. Mapping the ER-proximal transcriptome with APEX–RIP. (A) Global analysis of RNA localization at the Endoplasmic Reticulum. Fold change =
(FPKMpost-enrichment/FPKMpre-enrichment). Horizontal dashed line indicates p-value = 0.05. Top histogram illustrates the distribution of RNAs with
p-value = 510 5, which are boxed in gray in the scatter plot. Average data from two biological replicates are shown. Standard mRNAs encoding
known secretory and non-secretory proteins are highlighted in red and blue, respectively (see Materials and methods). (B) Classification of APEX-RIP
Figure 4 continued on next page
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Figure 4 continued
enriched, ER-associated RNAs. Collectively, all classes of non-coding RNAs constitute 6.7% of enriched genes (178 of 2672 RNAs). (C) Specificity
analysis for protein-coding mRNAs in the APEX-RIP-derived ER-associated RNA list. The total number of RNA species in each condition is indicated
above each column. 96.5% of the 2494 APEX-RIP ER-enriched mRNAs exhibit some form of secretory annotation (as predicted by Phobius, TMHMM,
SignalP, or GOCC, see methods), whereas only 53.8% of total mRNAs expressed in HEK293T cells (FPKM 1.0) are similarly classified (left). (D) Target
recall of ER APEX-RIP exceeds those of proximity-restricted ribosome profiling (Jan et al., 2014: see Supplementary file 3D) and biochemical
fractionation (Reid and Nicchitta, 2012; see Supplementary file 3C). See also: Supplementary file 3E. (E) Venn diagram comparing RNA datasets.
Note that all enriched RNAs in Reid et al. ER fractionation-Seq dataset were mRNAs. See also: Figure 3—figure supplements 1–2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.012
2B). While some proportion of these hits may constitute experimental noise, we believe the remainder hint at unanticipated roles for noncoding RNAs at the ER.
In summary, APEX-RIP is a powerful method for mapping endogenous RNAs proximal to the ER
membrane, with a sensitivity and precision that equals or surpasses alternate technologies. We anticipate that this approach may be extensible to other membrane-abutting subcellular regions as well.
Hypotheses from ER and nuclear APEX-RIP datasets
We wondered if the RNA subcellular localization datasets produced by APEX-RIP could be mined for
new biological hypotheses. To explore this possibility, we sought to computationally identify potential candidate RNAs that are localized at the interfaces between cellular compartments, since such
transcripts are difficult to isolate by conventional approaches. We focused on two such interfaces:
the ER-mitochondrial junction and the nuclear lamina.
We sought to identify RNAs localized to the ER-mitochondrial junction through close inspection
of our KDEL dataset. It is thought that that the bulk of the nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteome
is translated either within the cytosol, or in proximity to mitochondria themselves (Lesnik et al.,
2015). However, of the 2494 mRNAs in our ER-associated RNA dataset, 135 code for mitochondrial
proteins, as defined by GOCC. Since the majority of these genes (132 mRNAs, 98%) also carry secretory annotation, we considered the possibility that the translation or processing of these 135 mRNAs
require machinery localized at the ER membrane. For example, these mRNAs might be translated at
mitochondria-ER contact sites, some of which have been observed to contain ribosomes
(Csordás et al., 2006). To gain initial insight into these unusual RNAs, we analyzed these genes to
see whether, relative to total pool of mRNAs encoding mitochondrially-localized proteins, they were
enriched in particular characteristics (Supplementary file 4A). Intriguingly, 62.7% of these mRNAs
code for transmembrane proteins (as predicted by TMHMM), compared to only 20.4% of all nuclearencoded mitochondrial genes (Figure 5A). Subcompartment analysis of this ER-proximal population
was also revealing: of the 39 genes for which compartment-specific annotations were available, 49%
(19 genes) encode proteins destined for the outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM), whereas OMM
proteins comprise only 18% of the bulk mitochondrial proteome (Figure 5B). This may indicate
something unique about the biogenesis of OMM proteins, since the mRNAs encoding IMM-destined
proteins did not exhibit such enrichment (comprising ~41–44% of both our ER-proximal population,
and the general mitochondrial proteome), and those encoding matrix and intermembrane space
proteins were depleted in our set (Figure 5B). Interestingly, in yeast, proximity-dependent ribosome
profiling near the OMM showed similar enrichment of mRNAs encoding proteins destined for the
inner mitochondrial membrane (Williams et al., 2014). Perhaps a subset of proteins destined for
both the outer and inner mitochondrial membranes are locally translated at mitochondria-ER contact
sites.
We adopted a slightly different computational approach to identify candidate nuclear laminar
RNAs—transcripts that have long been proposed to contribute to the laminar functions of gene
repression (Kind et al., 2010) and nuclear architecture (Chen et al., 2016), but for which few examples have been identified. Because intermembrane space of the nuclear envelope is contiguous with
the ER lumen, we hypothesized that our KDEL-APEX-RIP experiment—in addition to enriching RNAs
proximal to the ER—might also enrich RNAs at the nuclear lamina (Figure 3A). We therefore sought
to discover candidate laminar RNAs by examining the population of KDEL-enriched RNAs for transcripts that are predominantly nuclear—that is, by intersecting our ER-associated and nuclear RNA
lists (Figure 5C). When we performed this analysis, and filtered this intersected list to remove
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Figure 5. APEX-RIP reveals RNAs with potentially novel localization. (A) Many mitochondrial transmembrane proteins appear to be translated at the ER.
mRNAs encoding mitochondrial proteins (defined by GOCC and MitoCarta 1.0 (Ashburner et al., 2000; Pagliarini et al., 2008) with predicted
transmembrane helices (predicted by TMHMM (Krogh et al., 2001); red distribution) are preferentially enriched by HRP-KDEL APEX-RIP, relative to
those encoding mitochondrial proteins lacking transmembrane domains (gray distribution). See Supplementary file 3A. (B) Mitochondrial proteins
Figure 5 continued on next page
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Figure 5 continued
encoded by ER-proximal mRNAs are enriched for outer mitochondrial membrane (OMM) destined proteins, and de-enriched for matrix and
intermembrane space (IMS) destined proteins. Predicted sub-mitochondrial localization of all GOCC-annotated mitochondrial proteins (left), those with
mRNAs enriched by APEX2–NES (middle), and those enriched by HRP–KDEL (right). IMM: Inner mitochondrial membrane. The total number of mRNA
species with annotated mitochondrial sublocalization is indicated above each column. See Supplementary file 4A. (C) Scheme for identifying putative
RNAs associated with the nuclear lamina. Since subsets of laminar proteins should be biotinylated both by APEX2-NLS (top right) and by HRP-KDEL
(bottom right and Figure 3A), we can intersect these two datasets to obtain a candidate list of nuclear lamina-localized RNAs. Notation as in
Figure 3A. (D) Venn diagram identifying putative lamina-associated RNAs, defined as the overlap between HRP-KDEL- and APEX2-NLS-enriched RNAs.
See also: Supplementary file 4B. Significance testing: hypergeometric test.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.013
mRNAs that encode secretory proteins (for which our quantification may convolve nuclear-retained
pre-mRNAs and mature ER-localized transcripts), we observed 104 candidate laminar RNAs, including 48 mRNAs and 56 noncoding RNA species (Figure 5D; Supplementary file 4B). Although some
portion of this highly speculative list may comprise experimental noise, the target RNAs identified
here represent a compelling starting point for exploration of regulatory RNAs that have long
remained elusive. Furthermore, given the flexibility with which APEX-RIP can be applied in different
subcellular compartments, we anticipate that this form of analysis could be widely used to generate
novel hypotheses regarding RNA subcellular localization in a diverse range of cellular contexts.
Discussion
Methods for mapping RNA subcellular localization are constrained by the limits of their spatiotemporal precision, the diversity of RNA species that they can simultaneously analyze, their generality
across cell types and compartments, and their ease of use. We believe that APEX-RIP holds substantial advantages to existing imaging- and sequencing-based techniques with regard to many of these
factors.
Compared to imaging-based technologies, APEX-RIP offers superior target throughput, ease of
use, and less cellular perturbation. For example, although modern variants of FISH can achieve
extremely high spatial precision—even enabling the visualization of individual RNA molecules
(Batish et al., 2011) this technique requires the synthesis and testing of customized fluorescent
probes for each transcript of interest, a cumbersome process that limits throughput (Cabili et al.,
2015). A highly multiplexed FISH variant, MERFISH, substantially boosts throughput—enabling thousands of transcripts to be simultaneously visualized—but requires complex protocols for probe set
design and imaging (Chen et al., 2015). An alternate approach, FISSEQ, achieves similar target
depth without the need for gene-specific probes, but instead relies on customized instrumentation
and a rococo process of in situ sequencing and imaging (Lee et al., 2014). Notably, without incorporating additional stains or markers, these imaging-based approaches provide little information
regarding the local environment (i.e., proximal cellular compartments or features) near each RNA
target. Furthermore, these techniques are perturbative in that they require extensively fixing and
permeabilizing cells prior to data collection (up to several hours in 1–4% formaldehyde) which can
destroy membranes and alter endogenous RNA localization (Fox et al., 1985). This latter issue can
be circumvented through a variety of live-cell imaging techniques, but these require the implementation of customized reagents that limit throughput, and may even distort the localization of the RNA
targets under enquiry (Paige et al., 2011; Hocine et al., 2013; Nelles et al., 2016). By contrast,
APEX-RIP is unencumbered by many of these constraints. It does not require the development of
target-specific expression constructs or probes; nor does it rely on specialized instrumentation. The
protocol captures RNA localization in living cells without detergent or methanol treatment so that
membranes and spatial relationships are preserved. The ensemble of RNA targets analyzed (and, for
that matter, the array of RNA classes analyzed) is theoretically limited only by the library synthesis
and sequencing protocols employed. Moreover, since APEX-RIP captures only RNAs proximal to or
within a specific subcellular compartment, it offers greater information content than do its imagingbased alternatives.
Compared to fractionation-based technologies, APEX-RIP offers superior accuracy, ease of use,
and general versatility. As illustrated in the nucleus and ER, our technique rivals or outperforms
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conventional Fractionation-Seq with regard to both target specificity and recall, apparently circumventing the dual issues of target loss and off-target contamination that can plague such approaches
(Figures 2E–F; 4C–E). We ascribe this performance boost to two principal factors. First, the high
spatiotemporal precision afforded by in situ biotinylation (Rhee et al., 2013) allows us to efficiently
isolate target material from contaminants that might be difficult to remove by classical fractionation,
thereby improving specificity. Second, covalently coupling target RNAs to affinity-tagged proteins
allows us to recover low-abundance or weakly affiliated transcripts that might otherwise be lost during biochemical enrichment, thereby improving target recall (Figure 3—figure supplement 2B). Perhaps more importantly, however, we have achieved these results in a variety of subcellular
compartments using a common protocol, thus obviating the need to develop customized purification schemes for each compartment. This generality should enable APEX-RIP to access ‘unpurifiable’
subcellular compartments for which such purification schemes would be impossible. While a related
technology, proximity-dependent ribosome profiling, exhibits similar versatility within diverse subcellular milieus (Jan et al., 2014), this approach is limited to actively translated mRNAs. It also requires
biotin starvation prior to tagging, which is toxic to mammalian cells, and as such, prevents widespread application. As we have demonstrated, APEX-RIP can map diverse classes of noncoding RNA
and quiescent mRNA (Figure 4B), and eschews toxic protocols that starve cells of essential nutrients
for prolonged periods of time.
The APEX-RIP methodology does have notable limitations. Cells to be analyzed must express a
recombinant construct, in contrast to FISH and Fractionation-Seq, which can be performed on genetically unmodified cells, or on intact tissues. Application of APEX-RIP in developing animals, or in situ
within animal nervous systems—cases where RNA localization is known to play a crucial regulatory
role—would require the generation of a transgenic organism, and may be hindered by the need to
deliver BP, H2O2, and formaldehyde into intact tissue. APEX-RIP also appears to exhibit poorer spatial specificity in membrane-free subcellular regions, since targeting APEX2 to cytoplasmic face of
the endoplasmic reticulum failed to enrich secretome mRNAs from cytosolically-localized transcripts
(Figure 3E). However, since the ER membrane forms a convoluted network that occupies a substantial volume of the cytosol, it is unclear the degree to which this apparent lack of specificity might
apply to other, more discrete subcellular milieus.
The APEX peroxidase used here has also previously been used to generate contrast for electron
microscopy in fixed cells (Martell et al., 2012; Lam et al., 2015), and for spatially-resolved proteomic mapping in living cells (Rhee et al., 2013; Hung et al., 2014; Loh et al., 2016; Han et al.,
2017; Hung et al., 2017; Mick et al., 2015). This study extends APEX to a new class of applications
and to a new biopolymer. In principle, it should be possible to use a single APEX-expressing cell line
to characterize a target subcellular compartment by electron microscopic, proteomic, and transcriptomic means. Related methods for proteomic mapping, such as BioID (Roux et al., 2012), lack this
versatility, because the underlying chemistry is not as flexible as the one-electron oxidation reaction
catalyzed by APEX.
We anticipate that the initial subcellular transcriptomic map presented in this work—probing the
mitochondrial matrix, cytosol, nucleus, and ER membrane of HEK 293T cells—will serve as a valuable
resource for cell biologists. Analysis of these data has already yielded potential insight into nuclearretained mRNAs, cytosolic lncRNAs, putative lamina-localized RNAs, and genes that may be translated locally at mitochondria-endoplasmic reticulum junctions. Applying APEX-RIP to other subcellular compartments will further expand the depth and breadth of this map. Furthermore, given the
high temporal resolution of APEX-RIP, we imagine that our technology might enable profiling of subcellular RNA pools in response to acute stimuli or drugs, or throughout stages of the cell cycle and
development.
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cell line (human)
HEK293T
ATCC
CRL3216;
RRID: CVCL_0063
cell line (human)
mito-APEX2 (HEK293T)
this paper
mito-BamHI-V5-APEX2
CMV promoter
Mito is a 24-amino acid
mitochondrial targeting sequence
(MTS) derived from COX4.
V5: GKPIPNPLLGLDST
cell line (human)
APEX2-NLS (HEK293T)
this paper
NotI-V5-APEX2-EcoRI-3xNLS-NheI
CMV promoter
NLS: DPKKKRKV
cell line (human)
APEX2-NES (HEK293T)
PMID: 28441135
BstBI-FLAG-APEX2-NES-NheI
CMV promoter
NES: LQLPPLERLTLD
cell line (human)
ERM-APEX2 (HEK293T)
PMID: 28441135
BstBI-ERM-APEX2-V5-NheI
CMV promoter
ERM is ER membrane targeting
sequence derived from N-terminal
27 amino acids of rabbit P450
C1 (MDPVVVLGLCLSCLLLL
SLWKQSYGGG)
cell line (human)
HRP-KDEL (HEK293T)
this paper
NotI-IgK-HRP-V5-KDEL-IRES
-puromycin-XbaI
CMV promoter
IgK is N-terminal signaling
sequence that brings protein to
ER (METDTLLLWVLLLWVPGSTGD).
KDEL is ER-retaining sequence
antibody
Anti V5
Life Technologies
R960-25;
RRID: AB_2556564
Dilution 1:1000
antibody
Anti FLAG
Agilent
200472
Dilution 1:500
antibody
Anti TOM20
Santa Cruz Biotechnology sc-11415;
RRID: AB_2207533
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Anti RCN2
Proteintech
10193–2-AP;
Dilution 1:200
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antibody
Anti Mouse-AlexaFlour568
Life Technologies
A-11031;
RRID: AB_144696
Dilution 1:1000
antibody
Streptavidin-HRP
ThermoFisher
S-911
Dilution 1:1000
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(plasmid)
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NLS: DPKKKRKV
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(plasmid)
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-puromycin-XbaI
CMV promoter
IgK is N-terminal signaling
sequence that brings protein to ER
(METDTLLLWVLLLWVPGSTGD).
KDEL is ER-retaining sequence
Additional information
Dilution 1:400
mito-BamHI-V5-APEX2
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Mito is a 24-amino acid
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CCGCGTCCCTTTCTCCATAA
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ACAACACAATGGGGCTCACT
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CCGGTAATGATGTCGGGGTT
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TCGCTCACACCTCATATCCTC
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AGGCGGCAAAGACTAGTATGG
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TCCATTGTCGCATCCACCTT
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GGTTGTTTGGGTTGTGGCTC
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GGGTTGAGGTCTTGGTGAGT
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ACCAATCCTACCTCCATCGC
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TCTTGCACGAAACGGGATCA
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CGAGGGCGTCTTTGATTGTG
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LSM6 reverse
this paper
CCAGGACCCCTCGATAATCC
sequence-based reagent
COPS2 forward
this paper
AGGAGGACTACGACCTGGAAT
sequence-based reagent
COPS2 reverse
this paper
GCCGCTTTTGGGTCATCTTC
sequence-based reagent
CGGBP1 forward
this paper
GCCTCGTCCACTTTCCCTAA
sequence-based reagent
CGGBP1 reverse
this paper
TCATGCCTTTACGTAGGATCGAG
sequence-based reagent
BCA53 forward
this paper
TCTTGCCTGCTCCACAGTTT
sequence-based reagent
BCA53 reverse
this paper
CAAACACCAAGGAGGGGTCT
sequence-based reagent
CEP128 forward
this paper
TACAGTAATGGACAGGCGGG
sequence-based reagent
CEP128 reverse
this paper
TCCGGAGTTGGTCGATTGAT
sequence-based reagent
MAD1L1 forward
this paper
CGAGTCTGCCATCGTCCAA
sequence-based reagent
MAD1L1 reverse
this paper
GCACTCTCCACCTGCTTCTT
sequence-based reagent
RAD51B forward
this paper
TTTGGACGAAGCCCTGCAT
sequence-based reagent
RAD51B reverse
this paper
CACAACCTGGTGGACCTGTA
sequence-based reagent
RBPMS forward
this paper
ACAGTCGCTCAGAAGCAGAG
sequence-based reagent
RBPMS reverse
this paper
CGAAGCGGATGCCATTCAAA
sequence-based reagent
TCF7 forward
this paper
TCAACAGCCCACATCCCAC
sequence-based reagent
TCF7 reverse
this paper
AGAGGCCTGTGAACTTGCTT
sequence-based reagent
HOOK2 forward
this paper
TTTGCTGAAAAGGAAGCTGGA
sequence-based reagent
HOOK2 reverse
this paper
GCAACTCCAGATCTGCCTCA
sequence-based reagent
MAN2C1 forward
this paper
ATGAGGCCCACAAGTTCCTG
sequence-based reagent
MAN2C1 reverse
this paper
TCTCATAGGTGGCCTGGGAA
Identifiers
Additional information
peptide, recombinant protein
commercial assay or kit
chemical compound, drug
Biotin-phenol (BP)
PMID: 23371551
software, algorithm
Tophat v2.1.1
DOI: 10.1186/gb-2013
-14-4-r36
software, algorithm
CuffDiff2
software, algorithm
Slidebook 6.0
RRID:SCR_014300
software, algorithm
DAVID bioinformatics analysis
RRID:SCR_003033
RRID:SCR_013035
RRID:SCR_001647
other
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Plasmids and cloning
The pCDNA3 mito-APEX plasmid was published previously (Rhee et al., 2013). The Mito-APEX2
construct was cloned from this plasmid using a two-step protocol. First, the A134P mutation
(Lam et al., 2015) was introduced into the APEX gene itself, using QuikChange mutagenesis (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA), and thereafter the APEX2 gene was moved to the lentiviral vector pLX304, via Gateway cloning (ThermoFisher Scientific, Waltham, MA), to generate the plasmid
pLX304 mito-APEX2. Other APEX-fusion constructs (pLX304 APEX2-NLS, pLX304 APEX2-NES, and
pLX304 ERM-APEX2) were cloned by Gibson assembly (New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA), using
PCR to add targeting sequences and Gibson Assembly homology arms to the APEX2 gene, and joining the resulting insert into the pLX304 vector digested by BstBI and NheI. To clone HRP-KDEL, the
HRP-KDEL-IRES-Puromycin cassette from HRP C (Martell et al., 2016), was PCR-amplified and
cloned into pCDNA3 using NotI and XbaI sites. Targeting sequences and restriction sites for all constructs are listed in (Supplementary file 5A).
Mammalian cell culture
Human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 T cells (RRID: CVCL_0063) were obtained, authenticated by STR
profiling from ATCC, and cultured in growth media consisting of 1:1 DMEM:MEM (Cellgro, ThermoFisher Scientific, Manassas, VA), supplemented with 10% Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), 50 units/mL penicillin, and 50 mg/mL streptomycin, at 37˚C and under 5% CO2. Cells were discarded at 25 passages.
Cell lines were not tested for Mycoplasma contamination. For fluorescence microscopy imaging
experiments (Figures 1B, 2A and 3C, and Figure 2—figure supplement 3C), cells were grown on
7 7 mm glass coverslips in 48-well plates. To improve cell adherence, coverslips were pretreated
with 50 mg/mL fibronectin (Millipore, Burlington, MA) for 20 min at 37˚C and washed once with Dulbecco’s phosphate-buffered saline (DPBS), pH 7.4. Cells used for generating lentivirus were grown
on T25 plates, in MEM supplemented as above, at 37 ˚C under 5% CO2.
Preparation of cell lines stably expressing APEX-fusion constructs
To prepare lentivirus, one ~ 70% confluent T25 plate of HEK 293T cells, grown as above, was cotransfected with 2.5 mg of APEX2 fusion plasmid, along with 0.25 mg and 2.25 mg, respectively, of
the lentivirus packaging plasmids VSV-G, and dR8.91 (Pagliarini et al., 2008). Transfection mixes
used 10 mL Lipofectamine 2000 (ThermoFisher Scientific) and were brought to a final volume of 2 mL
with unsupplemented MEM. The cells were transfected for 3 hr, after which media was replaced with
2 ml of fresh growth media with FBS. After 48 hr, the lentiviral supernatant was collected by aspiration and filtered through a 0.45 mm syringe-mounted filter. This filtered supernatant was immediately
used to infect cells. HEK293T cells, grown in 6-well plates as described above, were infected
at ~50% confluency, grown for 2 days, followed by selection in growth medium supplemented with 8
mg/mL blasticidin for 7 days, before further analysis.
For the cells stably expressing HRP-KDEL, HEK293T cells at ~60% confluency, grown in 6-well
plates as described above, were transfected with the mixture of 150 mg of plasmid and 10 mL Lipofectamine 2000 in unsupplemented MEM for 3 hr, after which media was replaced with 2 ml of fresh
growth media with FBS. After 48 hr, the cells were trypsinized and replated in T25 flask in growth
medium supplemented with 1 mg/mL puromycin for 7 days, before further analysis.
Immunofluorescence staining and microscopy
For immunofluorescence experiments (Figures 1B, 2A and 3C, and Figure 2—figure supplement
3C), stable APEX- or HRP-expressing cells were BP-labeled and crosslinked, as described below, and
subsequently fixed with 4% (v/v) paraformaldehyde in PBS at room temperature for 10 min. Cells
were then washed with PBS three times and permeabilized with cold methanol at –20˚C for 5 min.
Cells were washed again three times with room-temperature PBS and then incubated with primary
antibodies in PBS–supplemented with 1% (w/v) Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA)–for 1 hr at room temperature. After washing three times with PBS, cells were incubated with secondary antibodies and
neutravidin-AlexaFluor647 (1:1000 dilution) in BSA-supplemented PBS for 30 min. Cells were then
washed three times with PBS and imaged by confocal fluorescence microscopy, or in PBS at 4˚C in
light-tight containers prior to imaging. Primary and secondary antibodies used were listed in
Supplementary file 5B.
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Fluorescence confocal microscopy was performed with a Zeiss AxioObserver microscope with
63 oil immersion objectives, outfitted with a Yokogawa spinning disk confocal head, a Cascade
II:512 camera, a Quad-band notch dichroic mirror (405/488/568/647), 405 (diode), 491 (DPSS), 561
(DPSS) and 640 nm (diode) lasers (all 50 mW). Alexa Fluor488 (491 laser excitation, 528/38 emission),
Alexa Fluor 568 (561 laser excitation, 617/73 emission), and AlexaFluor647 (640 laser excitation,
700/75 emission) and differential interference contrast (DIC) images were acquired through a 63x
oil-immersion lens. Acquisition times ranged from 100 to 1,000 ms. For image acquisition and analysis, we used the SlideBook 6.0 software (Intelligent Imaging Innovations, Denver, CO, RRID:SCR_
014300).
Unless otherwise noted, imaging data are representative of three independent experiments
with 5 fields of view each.
Immunofluorescence measuring biotinylated protein diffusion
HEK 293 T cells stably expressing APEX2-NLS were seeded onto fibronectin-coated coverslips and
grown in 48-well plates, in 200 mL of 1:1 MEM:DMEM, supplemented with 15% (v/v) FBS, per well.
At ~60% confluency, cells were transfected with a GFP expression plasmid (pCMV-EGFP, addgene
plasmid 3525) using polyethyleneimine (PEI). Briefly, 150 ng plasmid was diluted into a 1:1 MEM:
DMEM solution and incubated with 1 uL of PEI in a final reaction volume of 20 mL, for 15 min at
room temperature, and added dropwise to cells. After 16 hr, cells were labeled and crosslinked
according to BP–quench–then–crosslinking protocol (see below). At the indicated time points (Figure 2—figure supplement 3C), cell growth media was aspirated, and cells were fixed with 4% (v/v)
formaldehyde in PBS supplemented, with 5 mM Trolox, 10 mM Ascorbate, 10 mM sodium azide, for
10 min at room temperature. Cells were washed twice with PBS, permeablized with methanol at
20˚C for 5 min, and immunostained as described above. To stain the nucleus and biotinylated species, 0.1 ug/mL DAPI (4’, 6-Diamidino-2-Phenylindole) and neutravidin-AlexaFluor647 (1:1000 dilution) were supplemented during the secondary antibody incubation. All primary and secondary
antibodies used are listed in Supplementary file 5B. The data in Figure 2—figure supplement 3C
are representative of the experiments with 15 fields of view each.
The nuclear and cytosolic biotinylation ratio (Figure 2—figure supplement 3C) was quantified
using Slidebook 6.0. Nuclear biotinylation was quantified as the signal within the DAPI-stained area;
cytosolic biotinylation was quantified as the signal within the GFP-labeled area, excluding that within
DAPI-stained area.
Western and streptavidin blotting
For blotting experiments (Figures 1C and 3D and Figure 2—figure supplement 1), stable APEX- or
HRP-expressing cells were grown in 6-well plates, as described above. After APEX labeling (see
below), the cells were harvested by scraping, pelleted by centrifugation at 3,000 g for 10 min, and
stored at –80˚C prior to use. Thawed pellets were lysed by gentle pipetting in RIPA lysis buffer (50
mM Tris, 150 mM NaCl, 0.1% SDS, 0.5% sodium deoxycholate, 1% Triton X-100, 5 mM EDTA), supplemented with 1 protease cocktail (Sigma Aldrich, St Louis, MO), 1 mM PMSF (phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride), for 5 min at 4˚C. Lysates were then clarified by centrifugation at 15,000 g for 10
min at 4˚C before separation on homemade 8% SDS-PAGE gels. Gels were transferred to nitrocellulose membranes, stained by Ponceau S (0.1% (w/v) Ponceau S, 5% (v/v) acetic acid, in water) for 10
min at room temperature, and imaged. The blots were then blocked with blocking buffer (3% (w/v)
BSA, 0.1% (v/v) Tween-20 in Tris-buffered saline) for 1 hr at room temperature, and incubated with
primary antibodies in blocking buffer for 1 hr more. The dilutions of the antibodies are as followed:
Mouse anti-V5 antibody (ThermoFisher Scientific RRID: AB_2556564) 1:1000 dilution and Mouse
anti-FLAG antibody (ThermoFisher Scientific) 1:800 dilution. Blots were rinsed four times for 5 min
with wash buffer (0.1% Tween-20 in Tris-buffered saline), and then immersed in blocking buffer supplemented with Goat anti-Mouse IgG H + L HRP Conjugate (1:3000 dilution, Bio-Rad Laboratories,
Hercules, CA), for 1 hr at room temperature. Blots were rinsed four times for 5 min with wash buffer,
and developed with the Clarity reagent (Bio-Rad Laboratories) and imaged on an Alpha Innotech gel
imaging system. Processing of streptavidin blots was similar. Following Ponceau imaging, blots were
blocked in blocking buffer for 30 min at room temperature, immersed in blocking buffer supplemented with streptavidin-HRP (1:3000 dilution, ThermoFisher Scientific, RRID:AB_2619743) at room
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temperature for 15 min, rinsed with blocking buffer five times for 5 min each, developed and imaged
using the Clarity reagent and an Alpha Innotech gel imaging system.
The data in these experiments (Figures 1C and 3D and Figure 2—figure supplement 1) were
also reproduced for quality control prior to quantitative PCR and sequencing.
Quantitative RT–PCR
For quantitative RT–PCR (qRT–PCR, Figure 1—figure supplement 1A,C, Figure 3E, and Figure 3—
figure supplement 1A) RNA samples (isolated as described below) were reverse transcribed using
the SuperScript III Reverse Transcriptase kit (ThermoFisher Scientific), priming with random hexamers
(ThermoFisher Scientific) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Samples were diluted with water,
mixed with gene specific primers (Supplementary file 5C), and Rox-normalized FastStart Universal
SYBR Green Master Mix (Roche Applied Sciences, Penzberg, Germany), and aliquotted into 384-well
plates. qRT–PCR was performed on an Applied Biosystems 7900HT Fast real time PCR instrument,
in quadruplicate. All threshold cycles (Ct, calculated per well) and efficiencies (", calculated per
primer pair), were calculated from ‘clipped’ data, using Real time qPCR Miner (Zhao and Fernald,
2005). Primer pairs with average efficiencies below 90%—measured by qPCR Miner in at least three
biological replicates, four technical replicates each—were omitted from further use. Raw Ct values
were corrected to account for the differences in sample volume, and percent yields were calculated
via the DCt method:
yield ¼ 100 ð1 þ "ÞCt
. . .where in, DCt ¼ Ctinput corr CtRIP corr
Experimental uncertainties were calculated as described previously (Shechner et al., 2015). Given
D = A–B, uncertainly was calculated using the formula:
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
s D ¼ ðs A Þ2 þ ðs B Þ2
. . .wherein sA and sB are the measurement errors of A and B, respectively. For P, the product or
quotient of values A and B, uncertainty was calculated using the formula:
r
ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
sA 2 sB 2
þ
sP ¼ P
A
B
The uncertainties of other functions, f(x), were calculated using the first derivative approximation:
sf ðxÞ ¼ sx f 0 ð xÞ
Sample sizes were determined in accordance with standard practices used in similar experiments
in the literature; no sample-size estimates were performed to ensure adequate power to detect a
prespecified effect size. Experiments were neither randomized nor blinded to experimental conditions. Each samples contained four technical replicates and no samples were excluded from analysis.
Significance testing: Student’s two-tailed t-test.
APEX-RIP, Part I: optimized in situ biotinylation and crosslinking
Stable-expression HEK 293T cells were grown to 90% confluency in 6-well plates, as described
above. Cells were incubated in fresh growth media supplemented with 500 mM Biotin Phenol (BP)
(Rhee et al., 2013); also available from Iris Biotech GmbH, Marktredwitz, Germany) for 30 min at
37˚C, after which cells were moved to room temperature and H2O2 was added to a final concentration of 1 mM. After 1 min, media was aspirated, and the APEX labeling reaction was quenched by
addition of 2 mL azide-free quenching solution (10 mM ascorbate and 5 mM Trolox, in PBS), and further incubation at room temperature for 1 min. Thereafter, the liquid phase was aspirated, and cells
were crosslinked by addition of 5 mL crosslink-quench solution (0.1% (v/v) formaldehyde, 10 mM
sodium ascorbate, and 5 mM Trolox, in PBS). After 1 min, media were aspirated, and cells were
again incubated in 5 mL fresh crosslink-quench solution, for 9 min at room temperature, with gentle
agitation. The crosslinking reaction was terminated by addition of glycine (1.2 M stock, in PBS) to a
final concentration of 125 mM, and gentle agitation for 5 min at room temperature. Cells were
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washed twice with 2 mL room-temperature PBS, harvested by scraping, pelleted by centrifugation,
and either processed immediately or flash frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at –80˚C before further analysis.
APEX-RIP, Part II: Cell lysis, streptavidin bead enrichment of
biotinylated material and RNA isolation
Unless otherwise noted, all buffers used during RNA isolation were supplemented to 0.1 U/ mL RNaseOUT
(ThermoFisher
Scientific),
1
EDTA
free
proteinase
inhibitor
cocktail
(ThermoFisher Scientific) and 0.5 mM DTT, final. Labeled, crosslinked cell pellets were thawed on ice
(when necessary), and lysed by incubation in 1 mL ice-cold RIPA buffer, supplemented with 10 mM
ascorbate and 5 mM Trolox, for 5 min at 4˚C with end-over-end agitation. Samples were then
sheared as described previously (Hendrickson et al., 2016) using a Branson Digital Sonifier 250
(Emerson Industrial Automation, St. Louis, MO) at 10% amplitude for three 30 s intervals (0.7 s
on +1.3 s off), with 30 s resting steps between intervals. Samples were held in ice-cold metal thermal
blocks throughout sonication. Lysates were then clarified by centrifugation at 15,000 g for 5 min
at 4˚C, moved to fresh tubes and each diluted with 1 mL Native lysis buffer (NLB: 25 mM Tris pH
7.4, 150 mM KCl, 0.5% NP-40, 5 mM EDTA), supplemented with ascorbate and trolox. For each
sample, 20% was removed as ‘input;’ to the remainder was added 50 mL of streptavidin-coated magnetic bead slurry (ThermoFisher Scientific ) that had been equilibrated by two washes in 1:1 RIPA:
NLB. Samples were incubated for 2 hr at 4˚C with end-over-end agitation. Beads were subsequently
washed with the following series of buffers (1 mL each, 5 min per wash, 4˚C, with gentle end-overend agitation): (1) RIPA buffer, supplemented with trolox and ascorbate, (2) RIPA buffer without radical quenchers, (3) high salt buffer (1 M KCl, 50 mM Tris, pH 8.0, 5 mM EDTA), (4) urea buffer (2 M
Urea, 50 mM Tris, pH 8.0, 5 mM EDTA), (5) RIPA Buffer, (6) 1:1 RIPA: NLB, (7) NLB, and (8) TE (10
mM Tris, pH 7.4, 1 mM EDTA).
Enriched RNAs were released from the beads by proteolysis in 100 mL of Elution Buffer (2%
N-lauryl sarcoside, 10 mM EDTA, 5 mM DTT, in 1X PBS, supplemented with 200 mg proteinase K
(ThermoFisher Scientific) and 4 U RNaseOUT) at 42˚C for 1 hr, followed by 55˚C for 1 hr, as previously described (Hendrickson et al., 2016). Eluted samples were cleaned up using Agencourt RNAClean XP magnetic beads (Beckman Coulter, Pasadena, CA), following the manufacturer’s 1.5 mL
tube format protocol, and eluted into 85 mL H2O. Thereafter, contaminating DNA was removed by
digestion with 5 U RQ1 RNase-free DNase I (Promega, Fitchburg, WI) in 100 mL of the manufacturer’s supplied buffer (1X final concentration) at 37˚C for 30 min. Purified RNAs were again cleaned
up using Agencourt RNAClean XP magnetic beads, as above, and eluted into 30 mL H2O. The concentration and integrity of all samples was measured using an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer, following
the ‘RNA Nano’ or ‘RNA Pico’ protocols, where appropriate. Samples were not heat-cooled prior to
loading Bioanalyzer chips.
Alternate APEX-RIP biotinylation and crosslinking protocols
For Mito-APEX2 experiments (Figure 1), we followed a BP–then–crosslinking protocol that omitted
the discrete radical quenching step (Figure 1—figure supplement 1A, bottom). Briefly, cells were
grown and APEX-labeled as described above. Following the 1 min incubation in H2O2, cells were
immediately treated with 5 mL crosslink-quench solution for one minute at room temperature, to
simultaneously quench the APEX2 BP labeling reaction and initiate formaldehyde crosslinking. The
liquid phase was aspirated, and cells were incubated in 5 mL of fresh crosslink-quench for two additional 1 min incubation steps, followed by a third, 8 min incubation at room temperature with gentle
agitation.
Thereafter, crosslinking was terminated by the addition of glycine, and cells were harvested as
described above. All subsequent steps (streptavidin bead enrichment, library prep, etc) proceeded
as described above.
For the crosslinking–then–BP biotinylation protocol (Figure 1—figure supplement 1A, top), cells
were washed once with 5 mL PBS, and crosslinked in 5 mL 0.1% (v/v) formaldehyde in PBS for 10
min at room temperature, with gentle agitation. The crosslinking reaction was quenched by addition
of glycine (1.2 M, in PBS) to final concentration 125 mM, and gentle agitation for 5 min at room temperature. Crosslinked cells were then washed three times with PBS and incubated with 500 mM
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biotin-phenol (BP) in PBS at room temperature, for 30 min. Thereafter, H2O2 was added to a final
concentration 1 mM, for 1 min. The liquid phase was then removed by aspiration, and cells were
washed twice with 2 mL quenching solution (5 mM Trolox, 10 mM Sodium Ascorbate, 10 mM sodium
azide, in PBS). Crosslinked, labeled cells were harvested by scraping, and processed as described
above.
APEX-RIP, Part III: Library preparation, sequencing, and quantification
Purified RNA samples were depleted of ribosomal RNA using the Ribo-Zero Gold rRNA removal kit
(Illumina, San Diego, CA), generally in accordance with the manufacturer’s protocol. Briefly, RNA
concentration and integrity were quantified on an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer, using ‘RNA Pico’ and,
where appropriate, ‘RNA Nano’ kits. Samples were not concentrated prior to rRNA depletion, which
can accommodate a maximum input volume of 17 mL. Therefore, samples with total input masses
of 20 ng or 20–100 ng were mixed with 1 mL or 2 mL of Ribo-Zero rRNA Removal Solution, respectively, in 1x RiboZero Reaction Buffer, at a final volume of 20 mL. Reaction mixes were incubated at
68˚C for 10 min, followed by 25˚C for 5 min more, and thereafter added to 32.5 mL magnetic beads
(90 mL bead slurry; washed with water and equilibrated in Magnetic Bead Resuspension Buffer, supplemented with RiboGuard RNase Inhibitor) by extensive pipetting. Binding reactions were incubated at room temperature for 5 min, gently vortexed for 5 s, and incubated for 5 min at 50˚C, in a
thermocycler. The supernatant, containing rRNA-depleted RNA, was diluted in water to 50 mL final
volume, cleaned up with 50 mL Agencourt RNAClean XP beads and eluted with 19.5 mL of Elute,
Prime, Fragment mix from the TruSeq RNA sample preparation kit, v2 (Illumina). Thereafter, libraries
were prepared using the TruSeq RNA sample preparation kit, according to the manufacturer’s
instructions, starting from ‘Incubate RFP’ step. Each library was given a unique index during synthesis. Library concentration was measured, and quality confirmed, on an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer,
using ‘DNA High Sensitivity’ kits.
While we did not explicitly include an RNA size-selection step in our library syntheses, we anticipate that smaller RNAs (tRNAs, snoRNAs, etc) would be relatively undersampled during our workflow. The mixing ratios used at all Agencourt bead-based cleanup steps (i.e. after reversecrosslinking, during rRNA depletion, and throughout the early steps of library synthesis) disfavor the
binding of such smaller species. For tRNAs, compact structure and post-transcriptional modifications
can hinder amplification, making absolute quantification difficult (Zheng et al., 2015). Finally, the
RNA fragmentation and library amplification steps have been optimized to generate libraries an
average length of ~270 bp, as verified by BioAnalyzer. We assume that such undersampling applies
equally to our input and RIP libraries, allowing us to compute fold enrichments, if not absolute abundances, for smaller RNAs that have somehow escaped de-enrichment (e.g. Figure 1D–E).
Indexed libraries were pooled in equimolar concentrations, with no more than ten libraries per
pool, and subjected to 50 cycles of paired end sequencing, followed indexing, on two lanes of Illumina HiSeq 2500 flow cells, run in rapid mode (Genomics Core, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT).
In general, three biological replicates for each construct were performed. Two biological replicates were performed for the mito-APEX experiment in Figure 1—figure supplement 1B.
As a basis of comparison, we here summarize the salient differences between our library preparation method, and those used in the alternative subcellular transcriptomics papers cited.
For the HEK 293T nuclear-cytoplasmic transcriptome datasets (Sultan et al., 2014), RNA isolation, library preparation and sequencing methods for the nuclear-cytoplasmic HEK293T dataset
were generally similar to our own. Key differences include: (1) the analogous ‘pre-enrichment’ samples were obtained by Qiagen RNA extraction of live cells, (2) samples were not subjected to
reverse-crosslinking or proteinase K treatment, and (3) following DNAse treatment, and RiboZero
rRNA removal, samples were purified by ethanol precipitation with a glycogen carrier. Raw data
were re-mapped and quantified in-house, using the same pipeline as was used for our own (see
below).
Datasets for both ER Fractionation-Sequencing (Reid and Nicchitta, 2012) and proximityrestricted ribosome profiling (Jan et al., 2014) experiments were acquired by isolating ribosomeprotected small RNA fragments, using methods that markedly differed from our own. In each case,
fractionated and/or biotinylated polysomes were isolated and treated with RNAse. Monosome-protected RNA fragments were purified by gel electrophoresis, ligated to sequencing adaptors and
reverse transcribed. Thereafter, Frac-Seq libraries were PCR amplified and subjected to SOLiD
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sequencing; Ribosome profiling libraries were circularized before library amplification and subjected
to single-end Illumina sequencing. We did not re-analyze data from these experiments: transcript
quantifications were used as reported.
Quantification of RNA abundances and folds enrichment; Assembly of
true positive and false positive lists
Deep sequencing reads were mapped to human genome assembly hg19 using TopHat v2.1.1
(Kim et al., 2013), RRID:SCR_013035), with the flags, ‘–no-coverage-search’ and ‘–GTF gencode.
v19.annotation.gtf’. Gene expression was quantified against the Gencode v19 reference transcriptome (gencode.v19.annotation.gtf, genecodegenes.org) with Cufflinks v2.2.1. (Trapnell et al.,
2013), RRID:SCR_014597), assessing the statistical significance of differential expression via CuffDiff2 (RRID:SCR_001647), with the flags, ‘–dispersion-method per-condition’ and ‘–seed 42’.
No explicit filtering was imposed to mask the quantification of any RNA species: although
nuclear-encoded tRNA, 5.8S, 18S, and 28S rRNA genes are absent from the Gencode reference
transcriptome, and are hence opaque to our analysis, all other transcripts were quantified in an unbiased manner. Each RIP experiment was quantified independently. All Seq data will be made available through GEO under accession GSE106493.
Fold enrichments were calculated as follows:
AverageFPKMPost streptavidin enrichment
log2 fold change ¼ log2
Average FPKMPre streptavidin enrichment
Significantly enriched genes in APEX-RIP, nuclear–cytosolic fractionation (Sultan et al., 2014),
and ER-fractionation (Reid and Nicchitta, 2012) datasets were called as follows. RNAs with p-values
greater than 0.05 (measured in CuffDiff, as described above) were removed from analysis. For ERfractionation dataset (Reid and Nicchitta, 2012), RNAs with RPKM lower than 10 were filtered out.
The remaining RNAs were then used to determine the enrichment threshold cutoffs, using Receiver
Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis (Fawcett, 2006), employing sets of true-positive and falsepositive genes identified as described below. At each fold enrichment value, the true positive rate
(TPR—the fraction of true positive genes identified as being enriched) and the false positive rate
(FPR—the fraction of false positive genes identified as being enriched) were calculated. The fold
enrichment value that maximizes the difference of these values (TPR–FPR) was chosen as the fold
enrichment cutoff. In mitochondrial and ER-associated APEX-RIP experiments, ROC analysis was
based on log2 fold enrichment values comparing pre- and post-enrichment RNA abundances; in the
nuclear-cytoplasmic experiment, it was based on calculated log2 fold enrichment values comparing
post-enrichment APEX2-NLS and APEX2-NES abundances.
The true and false positive gene sets needed for ROC analysis were defined as follows:
1. For mitochondrial APEX-RIP, true positives corresponded to the thirteen mitochondrialencoded mRNAs; false positive RNAs corresponded to nuclear-encoded long non-coding
RNAs.
2. For the nuclear and cytosolic partitioning experiment, the true positive list was defined as
HEK293T-expressed long non-coding RNAs; the false positive list was the list of ER proximal
RNAs (Supplementary file 3D) (Jan et al., 2014).
3. For ER-APEX-RIP, true positive genes were defined using data from ER-localized proximitydependent ribosome profiling (Jan et al., 2014), applying a ‘low-stringency’ selection
approach (Supplementary file 3D, ‘Low-stringency ER list’). Namely, true-positives corresponded to all RNAs with input RPKM 5.0, input count 12, and log2(fold enrichment)
0.904 (determined by ROC analysis) combined with all other HEK293T-expressed genes that
were predicted by Phobius as having secretory signals, but which were absent from MitoCarta
(Pagliarini et al., 2008). False positive RNAs were defined as all HEK293T-expressed genes
lacking secretory signals, as predicted by Phobius (Käll et al., 2004), SignalP (Petersen et al.,
2011), and TMHMM (Krogh et al., 2001).
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Coverage and specificity analysis of nuclear, cytosolic, and ER-proximal
RNAs
To estimate the coverage (recall) and specificity of APEX-RIP at each subcellular compartment, we
assembled lists of established target and off-target genes tailored for that compartment.
For analysis of the nuclear–cytosolic datasets (Figure 2F), our reference nuclear gene list comprised 827 lncRNAs with average RNA pre-enrichment abundances of 1.0 or greater. Our reference
off-target list comprised the set of 1260 ‘Low-stringency’ ER-proximal RNAs defined using proximity-restricted ribosome profiling (Jan et al., 2014), as described above (Supplementary file 3D,
‘Low-stringency ER list’).
For coverage analysis of the ER-proximal datasets (Figure 4D), our reference gene list comprised
71 mRNAs encoding ER-resident proteins (Supplementary file 3E). For specificity analysis
(Figure 4C,E) a list of ‘high-stringency’ true positive genes (Supplementary file 3D, ‘High-confidence ER list’) was assembled using the ER-localized proximity-dependent ribosome profiling data
(Jan et al., 2014), applying an input count cutoff of 100 and a log2(fold enrichment) cutoff
of 0.904 (determined by ROC analysis, as above). The reference off-target list used in this analysis
comprised 8855 mRNAs lacking secretory annotation, as assessed using Phobius, TMHMM, and SignalP, and which lacked the GOCC terms ‘Endoplasmic reticulum,’ ‘Golgi,’ ‘membrane,’ and ‘extracellular’ (Ashburner et al., 2000).
For analysis of contaminants in ER datasets (Figure 3—figure supplement 2A), the mRNAs that
lacked predicted secretory annotation (assessed by Phobius, TMHMM, and SignalP, and by an
absence of the GOCC terms ‘Endoplasmic reticulum,’ ‘Golgi,’ ‘membrane,’ and ‘extracellular’) were
submitted to DAVID Bioinformatics analysis (Huang et al., 2009), RRID:SCR_003033). Only Gene
Ontology terms that were enriched with p-values less than 0.05 —relative to the human background—are shown.
Identification of candidate lamina-localized RNAs
To obtain an initial list of potential laminar RNAs, we identified transcripts that were significantly
enriched both within the nucleus and near the ER membrane (Figure 5C). We manually curated our
lists of APEX-RIP nuclear-localized and ER-associated RNAs (derived from ROC- and p-value analysis—see above—without further modification; Supplementary files 2A and 3A), to identify transcripts that were significantly enriched in both. This resulted in a set of 441 overlapping RNAs
(Supplementary file 4B), which we classified into transcript types according to standard GENCODE
nomenclature. Statistically significant enrichment of overlapping RNAs in each class was calculated
by hypergeometric test.
Of the initial 441 candidate RNAs, 337 correspond to mRNAs encoding secretory proteins, annotated as described above. However, since expression was measured at the gene level, and did not
quantify individual RNA isoforms (see above) the apparent abundance of each gene stems from its
mature and all immature (e.g. partially spliced) transcripts. Hence, the 337 secretory mRNAs in our
overlapping set might be regarded as potential false positives, corresponding to cases where we
have measured mature mRNAs near the ER surface, and partially processed precursor species in the
nucleus, and not discrete species that reside at the interface of the nucleus and ER (i.e., the lamina).
For this reason, we encourage omitting these genes in subsequent analysis of potential laminar
RNAs (Figure 5D).
Significance
RNA subcellular localization is a critical factor that influences a wide array of biological processes,
ranging from Drosophila embryogenesis to mammalian neuronal signaling. However, while this spatial layer of transcriptome regulation has been characterized in a handful of contexts, a broader
understanding of its overall extent, the factors governing its establishment, and its impact on biological function, remain inchoate. The limitations hindering this understanding have been largely technical, since conventional methods—such as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and FractionationSequencing (‘Frac-Seq’)—depend upon specialized reagents and protocols that can limit throughput
and general applicability. To address this fundamental need, we have developed a new strategy—
APEX-RIP—which uses a simple toolkit and workflow to map the transcriptomes of discrete subcellular compartments at high depth and spatiotemporal resolution. APEX-RIP uses the engineered
Kaewsapsak et al. eLife 2017;6:e29224. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224
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ascorbate peroxidase APEX to biotinylate proteins within a target subcellular compartment in live
cells; these affinity-tagged proteins are then chemically crosslinked in situ to nearby RNAs. When
applied to a variety of membrane-enclosed and membrane-adjacent compartments, the APEX-RIP
strategy exhibited target specificity and coverage rivaling or exceeding those attained by conventional fractionation-sequencing-based approaches, at a depth far exceeding those attainable by
imaging-based methods. Furthermore, APEX-RIP can be applied to compartments that are recalcitrant to conventional biochemical purification. Given the superior precision, flexibility, and ease of
this approach, we anticipate that APEX-RIP will provide a powerful tool for dissecting RNA subcellular localization in a broad range of biological contexts.
Acknowledgements
We thank Jeffrey Martell for valuable experimental advice, Ozan Aygun for the curated ER protein
list and assistance generating APEX2-NLS and HRP-KDEL stable cell lines, Chinmay Shukla and Furqan Fazal for valuable computational advice, and members of the Ting and Rinn labs for their constructive insights and critiques. Funding was provided by the NIH (R01-CA186568 to AYT and U01
DA040612 to JLR) and Stanford (to AYT).
Additional information
Funding
Funder
Grant reference number
Author
National Institutes of Health
R01-CA186568
Alice Y Ting
U01-DA040612
John L Rinn
Stanford University
National Institutes of Health
Alice Y Ting
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the
decision to submit the work for publication.
Author contributions
Pornchai Kaewsapsak, Conceptualization, Data curation, Validation, Investigation, Visualization,
Methodology, Writing—original draft, Writing—review and editing; David Michael Shechner, Conceptualization, Validation, Investigation, Visualization, Methodology, Writing—original draft, Writing—review and editing; William Mallard, Formal analysis, RNA-Seq analysis; John L Rinn,
Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing—review and editing; Alice Y Ting, Conceptualization,
Supervision, Funding acquisition, Visualization, Methodology, Writing—original draft, Writing—
review and editing
Author ORCIDs
Pornchai Kaewsapsak, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7921-0868
David Michael Shechner, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0574-256X
William Mallard, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2271-945X
John L Rinn, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7231-7539
Alice Y Ting, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8277-5226
Decision letter and Author response
Decision letter https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.029
Author response https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.030
Additional files
Supplementary files
. Supplementary file 1. Mitochondrial APEX-RIP Data. (A) RNAs enriched by mito-APEX2-RIP. (B)
Unfiltered mito-APEX-RIP RNA-Seq data. (C) Column definitions.
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Tools and resources
Biochemistry Cell Biology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.014
. Supplementary file 2. Nuclear and Cytosolic APEX-RIP Data. (A) APEX2-RIP-enriched nuclear RNAs.
(B) APEX2-RIP-enriched cytosolic RNAs. (C) Unfiltered APEX-RIP RNA-Seq data. (D) Unfiltered
nuclear and cytosolic fractionation-seq data (Sultan et al., 2014). (E) Fractionation-Seq-enriched
Nuclear RNAs. (F) Fractionation-Seq-enriched cytosolic RNAs. (G) lncRNAs used to determine coverage analysis (Figure 2F). (H) Column definitions.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.015
Supplementary file 3. KDEL-RIP Data (ER-proximal RNAs). (A) KDEL-RIP-enriched ER-proximal
RNAs. (B) Unfiltered KDEL-RIP RNA-Seq data. (C) ER-associated RNAs enriched by FractionationSeq (Reid and Nicchitta, 2012). (D) ER-associated RNAs enriched by proximity-dependent ribosome
profiling (Jan et al., 2014). (E) True positive list: RNAs encoding established ER-resident proteins.
(F) Column definitions.
.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.016
. Supplementary file 4. Additional analysis of ER and nuclear datasets. (A) Mitochondrial mRNAs
(nuclear-encoded) enriched at the ER membrane. (B) RNAs that may be enriched at the nuclear lamina. (C) Column definitions.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.017
. Supplementary file 5. Materials used in this study. (A) Genetic constructs used in this study. (B)
Antibodies used for immunofluorescence. RRID: Research Resource Identifier (https://scicrunch.org/
resources). (C) qRT-PCR primers used in this study. (D) Column definitions.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.018
. Transparent reporting form
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29224.019
Major datasets
The following dataset was generated:
Author(s)
Year Dataset title
Dataset URL
Database, license,
and accessibility
information
Pornchai Kaewsapsak, David Michael
Shechner, William
Mallard, John L
Rinn, Alice Y Ting
2017 Live-cell mapping of organelleassociated RNAs via proximity
biotinylation combined with
protein-RNA crosslinking
https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/geo/query/acc.
cgi?acc=GSE106493
Gene Expression
Omnibus (accession
no: GSE106493)
Dataset URL
Database, license,
and accessibility
information
The following previously published datasets were used:
Author(s)
Year Dataset title
Sultan M, Amsti2014 Influence of RNA extraction
slavskiy V, Risch T,
methods and library selection
Schuette M, Dökel
schemes on RNA-seq data
S, Ralser M, Balzereit D, Lehrach H,
Yaspo ML
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/
ena/data/view/
PRJEB4197
Publicly available at
the EBI European
Nucleotide Archive
(accession no:
PRJEB4197)
Jan CH, Williams
CC, Weissman JS
https://www.ncbi.nlm.
nih.gov/geo/query/acc.
cgi?acc=GSE61012
Gene Expression
Omnibus (accession
no: GSE61012)
Reid DW, Nicchitta 2012 Ribosome footprinting in the
https://www.ncbi.nlm.
CV
cytosol and endoplasmic reticulum nih.gov/geo/query/acc.
cgi?acc=GSE31539
Gene Expression
Omnibus (accession
no: GSE31539)
2014 Principles of ER Co-Translational
Translocation Revealed by
Proximity-Specific Ribosome
Profiling
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