Identifying Novel Noncoding RNAs
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Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) is an enzyme that generates mutations and translocations in mature B cells to produce antibody diversity by targeting immunoglobulin loci, but “off-targets” of AID also lead to cancer. The mechanism of how AID finds its targets is still unclear. By conditionally knocking out a protein Exosc3 in the RNA exosome complex, we have identified a novel type of noncoding RNA, xTSS-RNA, which is most strongly expressed at genes that accumulate AID-mediated somatic mutations and/or are frequent translocation partners of DNA double-stranded breaks generated at the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH), indicating a role of this noncoding RNA in the AID targeting mechanism.
“Noncoding RNA transcription targets AID to divergently transcribed loci in B cells”
AUTHORS: Evangelos Pefanis*, Jiguang Wang*, Gerson Rothschild*, Junghyun Lim, Jaime Chao, Raul Rabadan#, Aris N. Economides, Uttiya Basu#.
LINK TO PUBLICATION:
Nature 2014 Oct 16;514(7522):389-93. doi: 10.1038/nature13580.
*These authors have contributed equally to this work. #Corresponding authors.