In a Cell paper published online in advance, an international team led by investigators at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory present what it calls interactome capture — "a systematic, unbiased, and comprehensive approach … to define the mRNA interactome of proliferating human HeLa cells." The EMBL-led team used interactome capture to identify 860 proteins that qualify as RNA-binding proteins by biochemical and statistical criteria. "Unexpectedly, we find that many proteins of the HeLa mRNA interactome are highly intrinsically disordered and enriched in short repetitive amino acid motifs," the authors write, adding that "interactome capture is broadly applicable to study mRNA interactome composition and dynamics in varied biological settings."
Over in Molecular Cell, a trio of researchers at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., presents its assessment of co-transcriptional adenosine-to-inosine editing in Drosophila, performed by "isolating nascent RNA from adult fly heads and subjecting samples to high-throughput sequencing." Overall, the researchers found that "mRNA editing levels correlate with editing levels within the cognate nascent RNA sequence, indicating that the extent of editing is set co-transcriptionally," they write in a paper published online in advance.