Transcriptome-Wide Analysis of Interplay between mRNA Stability, Translation and Small RNAs in Response to Neuronal Membrane Depolarization

Experience-dependent changes to neural circuitry are shaped by spatially-restricted activity-dependent mRNA translation. Although the complexity of mRNA translation in neuronal cells is widely appreciated, translational profiles associated with neuronal excitation remain largely uncharacterized, and the associated regulatory mechanisms are poorly understood. Here, we employed ribosome profiling, mRNA sequencing and small RNA sequencing to profile transcriptome-wide changes in mRNA translation after whole cell depolarization of differentiated neuroblast cultures, and investigate the contribution of sequence-specific regulatory mechanisms. Immediately after depolarization, a functional partition between transcriptional and translational responses was uncovered, in which many mRNAs were subjected to significant changes in abundance or ribosomal occupancy, but not both. After an extended (2 h) post-stimulus rest phase, however, these changes became synchronized, suggesting that there are different layers of post-transcriptional regulation which are temporally separated but become coordinated over time. Globally, changes in mRNA abundance and translation were found to be associated with a number of intrinsic mRNA features, including mRNA length, GC% and secondary structures; however, the effect of these factors differed between both post-depolarization time-points. Furthermore, small RNA sequencing revealed that miRNAs and tRNA-derived small RNA fragments were subjected to peak changes in expression immediately after stimulation, during which these molecules were predominantly associated with fluctuations in mRNA abundance, consistent with known regulatory mechanisms. These data suggest that excitation-associated neuronal translation is subjected to extensive temporal coordination, with substantial contributions from a number of sequence-dependent regulatory mechanisms.