PRJNA708219
Small RNA from HeLa cells exposed to RNA polymerase I inhibitor (BMH21)
Non-coding RNA has been studied for diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic purposes in cancer research. In particular, synthesis of rRNA has shown to be exaggerated in tumor cells. Transcription of rDNA is carried out by RNA polymerase I, which transcribes 47S/45S pre-rRNA genes in the nucleolus. Through a series of precursors, transcribed pre-rRNA mature into the active 28S, 18S and 5.8S rRNA subunits. Inhibiting the RNA polymerase I has been proposed as an anticancer treatment, where one promising candidate is BMH-21. Little is known, however, about small RNA generated from the pre-rRNA and their role in tumor progression and treatment. We, therefore, exposed HeLa cells--which originate from cervical cancer cells--to BMH21 for 60 min and compared these to DMSO treated cells. In addition, possible amplification of the effect after 60 min was analyzed in HeLa cells exposed to BMH21 for 12h. Size-selected RNA was prepared using the NEBNext Small RNA Library Prep kit and sequenced on an Illumina NextSeq500 sequencer, generating fastq files with 75 nt reads. Data was analyzed using seqpac--a novel framework for sRNA analysis in R. Seqpac is available at github: https://github.com/Danis102/seqpac.