Systematic analysis of YFP traps reveals common mRNA/protein discordance in neural tissues

While post-transcriptional control is thought to be required at the periphery of neurons and glia, its extent is unclear. Here, we investigate systematically the spatial distribution and expression of mRNA at single molecule sensitivity and their corresponding proteins of 200 YFP trap lines across the intact Drosophila nervous system. 97.5% of the genes studied showed discordance between the distribution of mRNA and the proteins they encode in at least one region of the nervous system. These data suggest that post-transcriptional regulation is very common, helping to explain the complexity of the nervous system. We also discovered that 68.5% of these genes have transcripts present at the periphery of neurons, with 9.5% at the glial periphery. Peripheral transcripts include many potential new regulators of neurons, glia, and their interactions. Our approach is applicable to most genes and tissues and includes powerful novel data annotation and visualization tools for post transcriptional regulation. ; Acknowledgments. We are very grateful to the Bloomington, Vienna, and Kyoto Drosophila Stock Centres (fly stocks), Flybase and Flymine (Lyne et al., 2007) for their reagents and open data, which were invaluable to this work. We are grateful to David Ish-Horowicz, Alfredo Castello, and members of the Davis laboratory for critical reading of the manuscript and feedback on the project. We thank Zegami Ltd. for their help, advice, and hosting the collection. This work was generously supported by a Wellcome Senior Research Fellowship (096144) and Wellcome Investigator Award (209412) to I. Davis, which funded A.I. Jarvelin, R.M. Parton, J.S. Titlow, and M.K. Thompson. Advanced microscopy facilities and technical advice as well as support to D.M. Susano Pinto were provided by Micron Oxford (https://micronoxford.com), supported by Wellcome Strategic Awards (091911 and 107457) and a Medical Research Council/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council ...