mRNA-based therapeutics are commonly produced through T7 RNA Polymerase-mediated in vitro transcription. Introducing these exogenous RNAs into human cells activates an RNA sensor Protein Kinase R (PKR), which suppresses translation initiation and reduces their therapeutic effectiveness. Incorporating uridine analogs into these transcripts prevents PKR activation and translation shutdown, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we demonstrate that treating T7 RNA Polymerase-produced transcripts with RNase III, which selectively degrades double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), blocks PKR activation and downstream translation-inhibition events, including eIF2α phosphorylation and stress granule formation in human cells. Interestingly, dsRNAs generated with uridine analogs robustly induce eIF2α phosphorylation and stress granules to the same extent as dsRNA containing uridine. These findings indicate that uridine analogs do not prevent PKR from detecting dsRNA. Instead, we show that uridine analogs decrease the production of T7 RNA Polymerase byproducts, including antisense RNA and dsRNA, which activate PKR and downstream stress responses. Finally, we demonstrate that higher amounts of exogenous RNA, lacking T7 RNA Polymerase byproducts, can induce stress granules independently of PKR and phospho-eIF2α, but dependent on stress granule scaffold proteins G3BP1 and G3BP2. Together, our findings show that uridine analogs mitigate PKR signaling not by blocking mRNA-PKR interactions, but by minimizing dsRNA byproducts from T7 Polymerase transcription. Furthermore, stress granule formation in response to high levels of exogenous RNA can occur through a mechanism that does not depend on PKR but relies on G3BP1 and G3BP2. These insights clarify the role of uridine analogs in PKR activation and may inform future therapeutic RNA design.
Ihn et al. (Thu,) studied this question.