A research team led by Baylor College of Medicine scientists has mapped the distribution of extracellular RNA binding proteins (exRBPs) across major human biofluids. The study furthers the understanding of the role of RBPs in exRNA biology and their potential as liquid biopsy biomarkers.
“ExRNAs exist in bodily fluids outside of cells where they can associate with a variety of carriers including RNA binding proteins (RBPs), but the cargo and distribution of RBPs across biofluids is largely unknown,” explained Robert Fullem, co-author on the paper published in Cell Genomics recently. “Our goal in this study was to fill that gap. This major gap in knowledge limited our understanding of the role of RBPs as carriers of exRNA in human bodily fluids. Our findings open a new road toward understanding exRNA biology and provide new opportunities for the development of exRBP/exRNA liquid biopsy biomarkers.”
The researchers applied computational analyses to identify exRBPs in plasma, serum, saliva, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid. The computational predictions were validated experimentally at about 80% in both plasma and cell cultures in the lab, suggesting high specificity for the computational method.
“With this information, we developed a map of candidate exRBPs and their exRNA cargo in bodily fluids expanding the landscape of potential biomarkers that can now be studied in liquid biopsies and used to track normal and disease processes,” added senior author Aleksandar Milosavljevic. “We present this map as a resource available at no cost to the scientific community.”