Our highly collaborative publication is out in EMBO Journal: ALBA proteins facilitate cytoplasmic YTHDF-mediated reading of m6A in Arabidopsis

ALBA proteins facilitate cytoplasmic YTHDF-mediated reading of m6A in Arabidopsis

Image source: Reichel et al. 2024, EMBO press

This study is the result of a fantastic collaboration between a number of labs and shows that the m6A-dependent binding of the YTH-domain family of RNA binding proteins in the plant model organism Arabidopsis is dependent on a another party: the ALBA proteins. We showed, using an elegant combination of experimental and bioinformatic strategies, that:

• ALBA binds directly to a critical motif on the IDR tail of the YTH-domain m6A reader ECT2
• Loss of ALBA results in reduced RNA binding by ECT2
• The dual binding of ALBA and ECT proteins is facilitated by the presence of specific upstream uridine-rich sequence motifs.

The work is a follow up to our previous work characterising the target repertoire and binding preferences of the YTH-domain readers ECT2 and the less broadly expressed ECT3 – you can read about this work here.