A new paper from members of the NIH Common Fund Extracellular RNA Communication Consortium (ERCC) describes a powerful new resource to study communication between cells via extracellular RNA (exRNA), the RNA that circulates outside of cells. The tool provides new information about interactions between exRNA and certain proteins that carry exRNA in biofluids known as RNA binding proteins (RBPs).

RBPs protect exRNA and allow it to serve as a messenger for cell communication in the body. This communication is critically important for human health and disease and may provide easy-to-collect biomarkers that tell us more about these processes. Although interactions between RBPs and RNA are known to play an important role in many biological processes, exRNA bound to RBPs and their distribution across biological fluids, such as blood and urine, are largely unknown.

To address this gap, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, ETH Zürich, and the University of Zürich collaborated to map exRNA carried by RBPs outside of cells, or exRBPs. They did this by expanding an existing data repository call the ERCC exRNA Atlas, combining data on RNA in biological fluids like spinal fluid, plasma, saliva, serum, and urine with data from other sources on RPB properties. Data from this new tool may provide a way to examine potential RNA and RBP markers to track normal and disease processes, which may help pinpoint diseases earlier for treatment and prevention.

Reference: LaPlante EL, Stürchler A, Fullem R, Chen D, Starner AC, Esquivel E, Alsop E, Jackson AR, Ghiran I, Pereira G, Rozowsky J, Chang J, Gerstein MB, Alexander RP, Roth ME, Franklin JL, Coffey RJ, Raffai RL, Mansuy IM, Stavrakis S, deMello AJ, Laurent LC, Wang YT, Tsai CF, Liu T, Jones J, Van Keuren-Jensen K, Van Nostrand E, Mateescu B, Milosavljevic A. 2023. exRNA-eCLIP intersection analysis reveals a map of extracellular RNA binding proteins and associated RNAs across major human biofluids and carriers. Cell Genom 3(5):100303. doi: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100303.