Mount Sinai researchers have catalogued thousands of sites in the brain where RNA is modified throughout the human lifespan in a process known as adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) editing, offering important new avenues for understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms of brain development and how they factor into both health and disease.
In a study published in Cell Reports, the team described how the rate of RNA editing in the brain increases as individuals age, with implications for dissecting the pathology of altered A-to-I editing across a range of neurodevelopmental and aging disorders.
“Our work provides more nuanced and accurate insights into the contribution of RNA modifications by A-to-I editing during human brain development,” says senior author Michael Breen, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, and Genetics and Genomic Sciences, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a member of the Seaver Center for Autism Research and Treatment. “The field has already identified millions A-to-I sites in the brain, which has made it particularly challenging to determine which of these are likely to be physiologically important. We narrowed this down to about 10,000 sites with potential functional roles from early fetal development through advanced aging. By providing an atlas of these sites, we’ve opened the door to further understand brain neurodevelopment through the lens of A-to-I RNA modifications.”
