RNA Pull-down Procedure to Identify RNA Targets of a Long Non-coding RNA

Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), which are sequences of more than 200 nucleotides without a defined reading frame, belong to the regulatory non-coding RNA's family. Although their biological functions remain largely unknown, the number of these lncRNAs has steadily increased and it is now estimated that humans may have more than 10,000 such transcripts. Some of these are known to be involved in important regulatory pathways of gene expression which take place at the transcriptional level, but also at different steps of RNA co- and post-transcriptional maturation. In the latter cases, RNAs that are targeted by the lncRNA have to be identified. That's the reason why it is useful to develop a method enabling the identification of RNAs associated directly or indirectly with a lncRNA of interest. This protocol, which was inspired by previously published protocols allowing the isolation of a lncRNA together with its associated chromatin sequences, was adapted to permit the isolation of associated RNAs. We determined that two steps are critical for the efficiency of this protocol. The first is the design of specific anti-sense DNA oligonucleotide probes able to hybridize to the lncRNA of interest. To this end, the lncRNA secondary structure was predicted by bioinformatics and anti-sense oligonucleotide probes were designed with a strong affinity for regions that display a low probability of internal base pairing. The second crucial step of the procedure relies on the fixative conditions of the tissue or cultured cells that have to preserve the network between all molecular partners. Coupled with high throughput RNA sequencing, this RNA pull-down protocol can provide the whole RNA interactome of a lncRNA of interest.