Herschel Mukherjee; J. Craig Blain; Lee E. Vandivier; Donovan N. Chin; Jessica E. Friedman; Fei Liu; Ashley Maillet; Chao Fang; Jenifer B. Kaplan; Jinxing Li; David M. Chenoweth; Allan Beck Christensen; Lars Kolster Petersen; Nils Jakob Vest Hansen; Luis Barrera; Neil Kubica; Gnanasambandam Kumaravel; Jennifer C. Petter
ACS Chem. Biol., 2020, 15(9), 2374-2381
https://doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.0c00357

Abstract

RNA is emerging as a valuable target for the development of novel therapeutic agents. The rational design of RNA-targeting small molecules, however, has been hampered by the relative lack of methods for the analysis of small molecule–RNA interactions. Here, we present our efforts to develop such a platform using photoaffinity labeling. This technique, termed Photoaffinity Evaluation of RNA Ligation-Sequencing (PEARL-seq), enables the rapid identification of small molecule binding locations within their RNA targets and can provide information on ligand selectivity across multiple different RNAs. These data, when supplemented with small molecule SAR data and RNA probing data enable the construction of a computational model of the RNA–ligand structure, thereby enabling the rational design of novel RNA-targeted ligands.