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Updated: Jul 2, 2025

In vivo Interrogation of Central Nervous System Translatome by Polyribosome Fractionation
Published on: April 30, 2014
Cell-type-specific expression of tRNAs in the brain regulates cellular homeostasis
Mridu Kapur1, Michael J Molumby1, Carlos Guzman2
1Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; The Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
None:
Defects in tRNA biogenesis are associated with multiple neurological disorders, yet our understanding of these diseases has been hampered by an inability to determine tRNA expression in individual cell types within a complex tissue. Here, we developed a mouse model in which RNA polymerase III is conditionally epitope tagged in a Cre-dependent manner, allowing us to accurately profile tRNA expression in any cell type in vivo. We investigated tRNA expression in diverse nervous system cell types, revealing dramatic heterogeneity in the expression of tRNA genes between populations. We found that while maintenance of levels of tRNA isoacceptor families is critical for cellular homeostasis, neurons are differentially vulnerable to insults to distinct tRNA isoacceptor families. Cell-type-specific translatome analysis suggests that the balance between tRNA availability and codon demand may underlie such differential resilience. Our work provides a platform for investigating the complexities of mRNA translation and tRNA biology in the brain.
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