A recently discovered RNA species on the cell surface is studied by proximity ligation.
Why is RNA displayed on the surface of mammalian cells? Although there have been many reported examples of extracellular RNA1, the existence of RNAs residing on the cell surface is just beginning to be appreciated, and little is known about their biological roles. To advance this research, Ma, Guo et al.2 have now introduced a method to interrogate a class of cell-surface RNAs known as sialoglycoRNAs3 at subcellular and transcript resolution. Their approach, reported in Nature Biotechnology, succeeds in associating sialoglycoRNAs to a host of cell-surface phenomena, with implications from oncology to immunology. Considering the importance of the cell surface in cell–cell and cell–environment communication, this method for understanding the presence, abundance, distributions and other features of cell-surface glycoRNAs is well positioned to generate new functional and mechanistic hypotheses.
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Fig. 1: Neu5Ac-binding aptamer meets an RNA sequence-specific binding probe to detect sialoglycoRNA in situ.
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Authors and Affiliations
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Petar Hristov
Stem Cell Program and Division of Hematology/Oncology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
Petar Hristov & Ryan A. Flynn
Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Ryan A. Flynn
Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Ryan A. Flynn
Corresponding author
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The authors declare no competing interests.
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Hristov, P., Flynn, R.A. Imaging glycosylated RNAs at the subcellular scale.
Nat Biotechnol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-023-02021-1
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Published: 23 October 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-023-02021-1
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