SRA

Protein synthesis is an energy-demanding process essential for cell proliferation and survival. Balancing the cost of protein synthesis with available resources has driven the evolution of its nutrient-dependent regulation. A central mechanism in this regulation is the repression of translation of the protein synthesis machinery during unfavorable growth conditions. This is mediated via mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), a master regulator of growth conserved from yeast to human. Despite extensive research, and the elucidation of a number of important factors, how mRNAs are translationally regulated by mTOR is still unclear. Repression depends on a 5' Terminal Oligo Pyrimidine (TOP) motif which is conserved across vertebrates and present in Drosophila melanogaster. In Caenorhabditis elegans and the marine chordate Oikopleura dioica most TOP mRNAs are trans-spliced to a spliced leader. This results in the removal of the originally transcribed 5' end and its replacement with a common short RNA sequence. In both species the 5' end of the spliced leader is pyrimidine-enriched but does not meet strict requirements for a canonical TOP motif. How this affects the translational control of TOP mRNAs is unknown. Here, using transcriptome-wide ribosome profiling on whole animals treated with the mTOR inhibitor Torin 1, we show that trans-spliced TOP mRNAs in O. dioica are subject to mTOR-dependent translational control. We also show, using existing data, that trans-spliced transcripts in C. elegans are differentially translated upon recovery from starvation-induced developmental diapause. Together our results demonstrate that spliced leaders in metazoans are targets for mTOR-dependent translational control in response to nutrient availability. This indicates that trans-splicing in metazoans, the function of which has remained largely enigmatic, plays a key role in the coordinated translational regulation of growth-related genes. Moreover, our results reveal an innovative strategy for rapid evolution and developmental control of downstream targets of the ancient mTOR pathway. Overall design: Ribosome-protected RNA fragments and total RNA extracted from animals treated with mTOR inhibitor Torin 1 and control animals (DMSO) in three biological replicates (12 samples in total) sequenced on two lanes on each of two Illumina flow cells