RNA-Seq of head tissue from Drosophila melanogaster Wild Type and Adar5G1dAdar-/- mutant

Purpose: Validation of Drosophila A-to-I editing sites Methods: We collected heads of 5 day old male dAdar-/- mutant (y, Adar5G1, w)26 and wild type (w1118) flies. Poly(A)+ RNA was used to prepare RNA-seq libraries which were subsequently sequenced single-end by an Illumina GAII Results:We builded a framework to identify RNA editing events using RNA-seq data alone in Drosophila. To validate whether the identified A-to-G sites were bona fide A-to-I editing events, we performed RNA-seq for the D.melanogaster wild-type strain (w1118) and for the Adar5G1 null mutant that eliminates RNA editing. We found that our method achieved high accuracy; 98.2% of all A-to-G sites showed only adenosine in the Adar5G1 sample Conclusions: We anticipate that our method will be very effective in the future to identify RNA editing events in different species. Overall design: mRNA profiles of heads of 5 day old male dAdar-/- mutant (y, Adar5G1, w)26 and wild type (w1118) flies