Post-transcriptional Gene Silencing Mediated by microRNAs is Controlled by Nucleoplasmic Sfpq [RNA-Seq]

There is a growing body of evidence about the presence and the activity of the miRISC in the nucleus of mammalian cells. Here, we show by quantitative proteomic analysis that Ago2 interacts with nucleoplasmic Sfpq in a RNA-dependent fashion. By HITS-CLIP and transcriptomic analyses, we demonstrated that Sfpq directly controls the miRNA targeting of a subset of crucial miRNA-target mRNAs when it binds locally. Sfpq modulates miRNA targeting in both nucleoplasm and cytoplasm, indicating a nucleoplasmic imprinting of Sfpq-target mRNAs that influence miRNA targeting in both cellular compartments. Mechanistically, Sfpq binds to a sizeable set of long 3’UTR forming long aggregates to optimize miRNA position/recruitment to selected binding sites, as we show for Lin28A mRNA. These results extend the miRNA-mediated post-transcriptional gene silencing into the nucleoplasm and indicate that an unique Sfpq-dependent post-transcriptional strategy for controlling both nuclear and cytoplasmic gene expression takes place in cells during physio-pathological events.