Characterizing RNA–protein interaction using cross-linking and metabolite supplemented nuclear RNA-immunoprecipitation

RNA-immunoprecipitation (RNA-IP) is a method used to isolate and identify RNA molecules specifically associated with an RNA-binding protein. Non-coding RNAs are emerging as key regulators of many biological and developmental pathways and RNA-IP has become an important tool in studying their function(s). While RNA-IP is successfully used to determine protein-RNA interaction, specific details regarding the level of this association and the metabolic requirement of this interaction which can influence the success of RNA-IP remain unclear. Here, we investigate the conditions required for efficient nuclear RNA-IP using Arabidopsis AGO4 (Argonaute 4) and siRNA binding as the study model. We showed that formaldehyde cross-linking, but not UV cross-linking, allowed for efficient pull-down of 24-nt siRNAs, suggesting that AGO4–siRNA interaction involves other protein(s). We also showed that, while formaldehyde cross-linking could also be performed on purified nuclei, ATP supplementation to the nuclei isolation buffer was needed to efficiently pull down 24-nt siRNAs. This result indicates that ATP is required for efficient siRNA loading onto AGO4. As most of the known RNA-mediated regulatory processes occur in the nucleus, our findings on cross-linking conditions and metabolite requirement for successful AGO4 nuclear RNA-IP provide a valuable insight and future consideration when studying the function of protein–RNA interactions in plants.