RiboTag translatome analysis of outer hair cell postnatal development

In order to determine the regulators of outer hair cell postnatal maturation, we utilized the RiboTag mouse model to perform a detailed transcriptomic analysis of outer hair cells at five postnatal developmental time points: P8, P14, P28, 6 weeks (6wk) and 10 weeks (10wk). This analysis resulted in consistent enrichment of outer hair cell expressed genes in the immunoprecipitated RNA compared to whole cochlear input RNA from each time point. Using transcription factor binding motif prediction on a set of defined outer hair cell enriched genes, we further use this dataset to identify the helios transcription factor as a regulator of the postnatal outer hair cell transcriptome. Examination of the outer hair cell translatome by outer hair cell expressed HA-tagged ribosomal immunoprecipitation at 5 postnatal timepoints (P8, P14, P21, 6wk and 10wk). Immunoprecipitated samples were compared to input cochlear RNA controls in independent biological duplicates or triplicates.