Taolan Zhao / Institute of genetics and developmental biology,Chinese academy of science
Xiaofeng Cao / Institute of genetics and developmental biology,Chinese academy of science
Wenfeng Qian / Institute of genetics and developmental biology,Chinese academy of science
Polyadenylation plays a key role in producing mature mRNAs. Prevailing dogma
holds that poly(A)-tailed mRNAs are uniformly bound by poly(A)-binding proteins
(PABs). Here, we characterized the RNA-binding landscape of three broadly
expressed PABs in Arabidopsis thaliana. We observed substantial variation in the
AtPAB-binding efficiency among mRNAs, and this can be partly explained by the
guanosine content of poly(A) tails. Genes with stronger AtPAB binding exhibited a
greater reduction in translational efficiency in the atpab mutants, explaining the
mutant phenotype of abnormal root hair development. Our study paves the way for a
better understanding of poly(A) tail-associated regulation of gene expression.