Alternative polyadenylated mRNAs behave as asynchronous rhythmic transcription in Arabidopsis

Alternative polyadenylation (APA) is a widespread post-transcriptional modification method that changes the 3 ' ends of transcripts by altering poly(A) site usage. However, the longitudinal transcriptomic 3 ' end profile and its mechanism of action are poorly understood. We applied diurnal time-course poly(A) tag sequencing (PAT-seq) for Arabidopsis and identified 3284 genes that generated both rhythmic and arrhythmic transcripts. These two classes of transcripts appear to exhibit dramatic differences in expression and translation activisty. The asynchronized transcripts derived by APA are embedded with different poly(A) signals, especially for rhythmic transcripts, which contain higher AAUAAA and UGUA signal proportions. The Pol II occupancy maximum is reached upstream of rhythmic poly(A) sites, while it is present directly at arrhythmic poly(A) sites. Integrating H3K9ac and H3K4me3 time-course data analyses revealed that transcriptional activation of histone markers may be involved in the differentiation of rhythmic and arrhythmic APA transcripts. These results implicate an interplay between histone modification and RNA 3 '-end processing, shedding light on the mechanism of transcription rhythm and alternative polyadenylation.

Automated summary

The study reveals that alternative polyadenylation can affect the 3' end profile of transcripts in Arabidopsis, indicating significant differences in expression and translation activity between rhythmic and arrhythmic transcripts. Additionally, rhythmic transcripts contain a higher proportion of AAUAAA and UGUA signals.