Absolute calibration of ribosome profiling assesses the dynamics of ribosomal flux on transcripts

Abstract

Ribosome profiling, which is based on deep sequencing of ribosome footprints, has served as a powerful tool for elucidating the regulatory mechanism of protein synthesis. However, the current method has substantial issues: contamination by rRNAs and the lack of appropriate methods to determine overall ribosome numbers in transcripts. Here, we overcame these hurdles through the development of "Ribo-FilterOut", which is based on the separation of footprints from ribosome subunits by ultrafiltration, and "Ribo-Calibration", which relies on external spike-ins of stoichiometrically defined mRNA-ribosome complexes. A combination of these approaches measures the absolute number of ribosomes on a transcript, the translation initiation rate, and the overall number of translation events before its decay, all in a genome-wide manner. Moreover, our method revealed the allocation of ribosomes under heat shock stress, during aging, and across cell types. Our strategy transforms ribosome profiling technique from relative to absolute quantification of translation.