Measuring the influence of RNA binding proteins on A-to-I RNA editing in the Drosophila brain

A-to-I RNA editing levels differ across tissues and cell types, but regulators of the editing process are largely unknown. We used RNA-seq on whole fly brains with different RNA binding proteins knocked down to test for A-to-I RNA editing level differences between controls and knockdowns. Overall design: To screen for editing regulators in the Drosophila brain, we crossed a pan-neuronal Gal4 driver, C155-Gal4, to different UAS-shRNA lines targeting individual RNA binding proteins, extracted RNA and made RNA-seq libraries. We sequenced four total replicates of shGFP controls and two replicates of all RNA binding protein knockdowns.