RESEARCH ARTICLE A plant-like mechanism coupling m6A reading to polyadenylation safeguards transcriptome integrity and developmental gene partitioning in Toxoplasma Dayana C Farhat1, Matthew W Bowler2, Guillaume Communie3, Dominique Pontier4, Lucid Belmudes5, Caroline Mas6, Charlotte Corrao1, Yohann Coute´ 5, Alexandre Bougdour1, Thierry Lagrange4, Mohamed-Ali Hakimi1†*, Christopher Swale1†* 1IAB,Team Host-Pathogen Interactions & Immunity to Infection, INSERMU1209, CNRSUMR5309, Grenoble Alpes University, Grenoble, France; 2European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Grenoble, France; 3Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France; 4Laboratoire Genome et Developpement des Plantes (LGDP), UMR5096, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universitede Perpignan via Domitia (UPVD), Perpignan, France; 5Univ. Grenoble Alpes, INSERM, CEA, UMR BioSante´ U1292, CNRS, CEA, Grenoble, France; 6Integrated Structural Biology Grenoble (ISBG) CNRS, CEA, Universite´ Grenoble Alpes, EMBL, Grenoble, France *For correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract Correct 3’end processing of mRNAs is one of the regulatory cornerstones of gene (M-AH); expression. In a parasite that must adapt to the regulatory requirements of its multi-host life style, christopher.swale@univ-grenoble- there is a need to adopt additional means to partition the distinct transcriptional signatures of the alpes.fr (CS) closely and tandemly arranged stage-specific genes. In this study, we report our findings in T. †These authors contributed gondii of an m6A-dependent 3’end polyadenylation serving as a transcriptional barrier at these loci. equally to this work We identify the core polyadenylation complex within T. gondii and establish CPSF4 as a reader for Competing interests: The m6A-modified mRNAs, via a YTH domain within its C-terminus, a feature which is shared with authors declare that no plants.