Ethanol- and PARP-Mediated Regulation of Ribosome-Associated Long Non-Coding RNA (lncRNA) in Pyramidal Neurons

Although, by definition, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are not translated, they are sometimes associated with ribosomes. In fact, some estimates suggest the existence of more than 50 K lncRNA molecules that could encode for small peptides. We examined the effects of an ethanol and Poly-ADP Ribose Polymerase (PARP) inhibitor (ABT-888) on ribosome-bound lncRNAs. Mice were administered via intraperitoneal injection (i.p.) either normal saline (CTL) or ethanol (EtOH) twice a day for four consecutive days. On the fourth day, a sub-group of mice administered with ethanol also received ABT-888 (EtOH+ABT). Ribosome-bound lncRNAs in CaMKIIα-expressing pyramidal neurons were measured using the Translating Ribosome Affinity Purification (TRAP) technique. Our findings show that EtOH altered the attachment of 107 lncRNA transcripts, while EtOH+ABT altered 60 lncRNAs. Among these 60 lncRNAs, 49 were altered by both conditions, while EtOH+ABT uniquely altered the attachment of 11 lncRNA transcripts that EtOH alone did not affect. To validate these results, we selected eight lncRNAs (Mir124-2hg, 5430416N02Rik, Snhg17, Snhg12, Snhg1, Mir9-3hg, Gas5, and 1110038B12Rik) for qRT-PCR analysis. The current study demonstrates that ethanol-induced changes in lncRNA attachment to ribosomes can be mitigated by the addition of the PARP inhibitor ABT-888.