Self-Assembly of Intracellular Multivalent RNA Complexes Using Dimeric Corn and Beetroot Aptamers
2022
Wu, Jiahui | Svensen, Nina | Song, Wenjiao | Kim, Hyaeyeong | Zhang, Sulei | Li, Xing | Jaffrey, Samie R.
DNA and RNA can spontaneously self-assemble into various structures, including aggregates, complexes, and ordered structures. The self-assembly reactions cannot be genetically encoded to occur in living mammalian cells since the double-stranded nucleic acids generated by current self-assembly approaches are unstable and activate innate RNA immunity pathways. Here, we show that recently described dimeric aptamers can be used to create RNAs that self-assemble and create RNA and RNA–protein assemblies in cells. We find that incorporation of five copies of Corn, a dimeric fluorogenic RNA aptamer, into an RNA causes the RNA to form large clusters in cells, reflecting multivalent RNA–RNA interactions enabled by these RNAs. Here, we also describe a second dimeric fluorogenic aptamer, Beetroot, which shows partial sequence similarity to Corn. Both Corn and Beetroot form homodimers with themselves but do not form Corn–Beetroot heterodimers. We thus use Corn and Beetroot to encode distinct RNA–protein assemblies in the same cells. Overall, these studies provide an approach for inducing RNA self-assembly, enable multiplexing of distinct RNA assemblies in cells, and demonstrate that proteins can be recruited to RNA assemblies to genetically encode intracellular RNA–protein assemblies.
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