m6a methylation drives IMP1 regulation during human neuronal differentiation [RNA-seq]

Human neurodevelopment requires differentiating neurons to establish large networks of connections in a highly stereotyped manner. Neuronal differentiation in particular requires RNA-binding proteins to spatiotemporally regulate thousands of different mRNAs. Yet how these proteins precisely relate to neuronal development and coordinate the expression of functionally coherent genes in a cell type specific manner is only partially understood. To address this, we sought to clarify how the paradigmatic RNA-binding protein IMP1/IGF2BP1, an essential developmental factor, selects and regulates its RNA targets transcriptome-wide during the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cell-derived neural precursor cells to their neuronal counterparts. We used a combination of systemic and molecular analyses to show that IMP1 directly binds to and regulates the expression of a large sets of mRNAs.