RNA editing is a post-transcriptional modification that can have important effects on mRNA translation and, thereby, on the composition of the proteome. RNA editing exhibits complex responses to temperature and thus may be important in ectothermic species' capacities to cope with thermal stress. To investigate the temperature-dependent patterns and potential functions of RNA editing events in intertidal mollusks, we conducted a genome-wide identification and analysis of RNA editing sites in the mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis exposed to various temperatures. Our results showed that the number of sites where adenosine (A) was converted to inosine (I) decreased significantly with increasing temperatures and correlated positively with the expression level of the enzyme adenosine deaminase acting on RNA. Furthermore, the shared edited genes among all temperatures were enriched significantly in some key biological processes (e.g., negative regulation of apoptotic processes), and the unique edited genes at the sublethal temperature of 31°C were enriched significantly in some cellular signaling pathways (e.g., GTPase activator activity). Luciferase assays showed that protein translation efficiency was positively correlated with the number of edited A-to-I sites in the 3' untranslated region (3'UTR). Our study demonstrates that temperature-sensitive A-to-I editing events may play an important role in allowing mollusks like M. galloprovincialis to rapidly acclimatize to stressful thermal environments.
Zhu et al. (Tue,) studied this question.