GSE60045
A post-translational regulatory switch on UPF1 controls targeted mRNA degradation.
Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) controls the quality of eukaryotic gene expression and also degrades physiologic mRNAs. How NMD targets are identified is incompletely understood. A central NMD factor is the ATP-dependent RNA helicase UPF1. Neither the distance in space between the termination codon and the poly(A) tail nor the binding of steady-state, largely hypophosphorylated UPF1 is a discriminating marker of cellular NMD targets, unlike for PTC-containing reporter mRNAs when compared to their PTC-free counterparts. Here, we map phosphorylated UPF1 (p-UPF1) binding sites using transcriptome-wide footprinting or DNA oligonucleotide-directed mRNA cleavage to report that p-UPF1 provides the first reliable cellular NMD-target marker. p-UPF1 is enriched on NMD target 3''UTRs along with SMG5 and SMG7 but not SMG1 or SMG6. Immunoprecipitations of UPF1 variants deficient in various aspects of the NMD process in parallel with FRET experiments reveal that ATPase/helicase-deficient UPF1 manifests high levels of RNA binding and disregulated hyperphosphorylation, whereas wild-type UPF1 releases from nonspecific RNA interactions in an ATP hydrolysis-dependent mechanism until an NMD target is identified. 3''UTR-associated UPF1 undergoes regulated phosphorylation on NMD targets, providing a binding platform for mRNA degradative activities. p-UPF1 binding to NMD target 3''UTRs is stabilized by SMG5 and SMG7. Our results help to explain why steady-state UPF1 binding is not a marker for cellular NMD substrates and how this binding is transformed to induce mRNA decay. Overall design: RIP-seq experiments for p-UPF1, control IPs using rabbit IgG and additional control sample without IP were performed in duplicates