Functional analysis of the microtubule-interacting transcriptome

RNA localization is an important mechanism for achieving precise control of posttranscriptional gene expression. Previously, we demonstrated that a subset of cellular mRNAs copurify with mitotic microtubules in egg extracts of Xenopus laevis. Due to limited genomic sequence information available for X. laevis, we used RNA-seq to comprehensively identify the microtubule-interacting transcriptome of the related frog Xenopus tropicalis. We identified ~450 mRNAs that showed significant enrichment on microtubules (MT-RNAs). In addition, we demonstrated that the MT-RNAs incenp, xrhamm, and tpx2 associate with spindle microtubules in vivo. MT-RNAs are enriched with transcripts associated with cell division, spindle formation, and chromosome function, demonstrating an overrepresentation of genes involved in mitotic regulation. To test whether uncharacterized MT-RNAs have a functional role in mitosis, we performed RNA interference and discovered that several MT-RNAs are required for normal spindle pole organization and γ-tubulin distribution. Together, these data demonstrate that microtubule association is one mechanism for compartmentalizing functionally related mRNAs within the nucleocytoplasmic space of mitotic cells and suggest that MT-RNAs are likely to contribute to spindle-localized mitotic translation.