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closeComplementary approaches for the analysis of post-transcriptional regulons
Posted by cansong on 19 Mar 2009 at 17:45 GMT
I would like to point to two other excellent papers also addressing the systematic analysis global post-transcriptional programs from Jorg Vogel’s lab at Max Planck (Sittka et al PLoS Gen. 2008) and Patrick Brown’s lab at Stanford (Hogan et al PLoS Bio. 2008). These both employ transcript-centric approaches, involving RNA immunoaffinity purification and target identification by direct pyrosequencing and/or microarray analysis. To my knowledge, the work presented here (Ansong et al PLoS ONE 2009) is one of the first to employ an alternative non-transcript centric approach (sample-matched proteomics-transcriptomics) to the systematic analysis global post-transcriptional programs.
Both approaches provide complementary information, the transcript-centric approach information on direct targets of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and the non-transcript-centric approach information on both direct and indirect targets of RNA-binding proteins and most importantly quantitative information on changes in the expression pattern of targets of RNA-binding proteins at the level of translation. It is my belief that an integration of both approaches would yield arguably at present the clearest and most accurate characterization of post-transcriptional regulons in an organism. Not only would there be potentially two sources of evidence for targets of RBPs but perhaps more importantly the sample-matched proteomics-transcriptomics approach would also provide quantitative information on changes in the expression pattern of targets of RNA-binding proteins at the level of translation. I am interested to hear the scientific community’s thoughts on this.