Abstract

Human mitochondria contain a genome (mtDNA) that encodes essential subunits of the oxidative phosphorylation system. Expression of mtDNA entails multi-step maturation of precursor RNA. In other systems, the RNA life cycle involves surveillance mechanisms, however, the details of RNA quality control have not been extensively characterised in human mitochondria. Using a mitochondrial ribosome profiling and mitochondrial poly(A)-tail RNA sequencing (MPAT-Seq) assay we identify the poly(A)-specific exoribonuclease PDE12 as a major factor for the quality control of mitochondrial non-coding RNAs. The lack of PDE12 results in a spurious polyadenylation of the 3' ends of the mitochondrial (mt-) rRNA and mt-tRNA. While the aberrant adenylation of 16S mt-rRNA did not affect the integrity of the mitoribosome, spurious poly(A) additions to mt-tRNA led to reduced levels of aminoacylated pool of certain mt-tRNAs and mitoribosome stalling at the corresponding codons. Therefore, our data uncover a new, deadenylation-dependent mtRNA maturation pathway in human mitochondria.

Data availability

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Sarah F Pearce

    MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Joanna Rorbach

    MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Lindsey Van Haute

    MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Aaron R D'Souza

    MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Pedro Rebelo-Guiomar

    MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  6. Christopher A Powell

    MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Ian Brierley

    Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  8. Andrew E Firth

    Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7986-9520
  9. Michal Minczuk

    MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
    For correspondence
    mam@mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8242-1420

Funding

Medical Research Council (MC_U105697135)

  • Sarah F Pearce
  • Joanna Rorbach
  • Lindsey Van Haute
  • Aaron R D'Souza
  • Pedro Rebelo-Guiomar
  • Christopher A Powell
  • Michal Minczuk

Wellcome (106207)

  • Ian Brierley
  • Andrew E Firth

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Timothy W Nilsen, Case Western Reserve University, United States

Version history

  1. Received: April 7, 2017
  2. Accepted: July 21, 2017
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: July 26, 2017 (version 1)
  4. Version of Record published: August 4, 2017 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2017, Pearce et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 3,108
    views
  • 525
    downloads
  • 69
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Sarah F Pearce
  2. Joanna Rorbach
  3. Lindsey Van Haute
  4. Aaron R D'Souza
  5. Pedro Rebelo-Guiomar
  6. Christopher A Powell
  7. Ian Brierley
  8. Andrew E Firth
  9. Michal Minczuk
(2017)
Maturation of selected human mitochondrial tRNAs requires deadenylation
eLife 6:e27596.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27596

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27596

Further reading

    1. Cell Biology
    2. Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Lucie Crhak Khaitova, Pavlina Mikulkova ... Karel Riha
    Research Article

    Heat stress is a major threat to global crop production, and understanding its impact on plant fertility is crucial for developing climate-resilient crops. Despite the known negative effects of heat stress on plant reproduction, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated the impact of elevated temperature on centromere structure and chromosome segregation during meiosis in Arabidopsis thaliana. Consistent with previous studies, heat stress leads to a decline in fertility and micronuclei formation in pollen mother cells. Our results reveal that elevated temperature causes a decrease in the amount of centromeric histone and the kinetochore protein BMF1 at meiotic centromeres with increasing temperature. Furthermore, we show that heat stress increases the duration of meiotic divisions and prolongs the activity of the spindle assembly checkpoint during meiosis I, indicating an impaired efficiency of the kinetochore attachments to spindle microtubules. Our analysis of mutants with reduced levels of centromeric histone suggests that weakened centromeres sensitize plants to elevated temperature, resulting in meiotic defects and reduced fertility even at moderate temperatures. These results indicate that the structure and functionality of meiotic centromeres in Arabidopsis are highly sensitive to heat stress, and suggest that centromeres and kinetochores may represent a critical bottleneck in plant adaptation to increasing temperatures.

    1. Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Allison Coté, Aoife O'Farrell ... Arjun Raj
    Research Article

    Splicing is the stepwise molecular process by which introns are removed from pre-mRNA and exons are joined together to form mature mRNA sequences. The ordering and spatial distribution of these steps remain controversial, with opposing models suggesting splicing occurs either during or after transcription. We used single-molecule RNA FISH, expansion microscopy, and live-cell imaging to reveal the spatiotemporal distribution of nascent transcripts in mammalian cells. At super-resolution levels, we found that pre-mRNA formed clouds around the transcription site. These clouds indicate the existence of a transcription-site-proximal zone through which RNA move more slowly than in the nucleoplasm. Full-length pre-mRNA undergo continuous splicing as they move through this zone following transcription, suggesting a model in which splicing can occur post-transcriptionally but still within the proximity of the transcription site, thus seeming co-transcriptional by most assays. These results may unify conflicting reports of co-transcriptional versus post-transcriptional splicing.