Translation in human mature erythrocytes

It is generally believed that human mature erythrocytes do not possess functional ribosomes, and therefore cannot synthesize proteins. However, this dogma is not consistent with the long life of mature erythrocytes in the circulatory system. The mass-spectrometry analysis was done on highly pure preparation of human mature erythrocytes to identify the proteome. Results of the analysis show that there is no contamination from other cell types. We also demonstrate translation by polysome profiling, metabolic labelling and RiboPuromycylation. RNA-seq and quantitative RT-PCR assays revealed that HBA (alpha globin) and HBB (beta globin) transcripts are selectively translated. RNA-seq and translatome analyses revealed the presence of all necessary translation factors and aminoacyl tRNA synthetases.