TOOLS AND RESOURCES Efficient analysis of mammalian polysomes in cells and tissues using Ribo Mega-SEC Harunori Yoshikawa1†, Mark Larance1,2†, Dylan J Harney2, Ramasubramanian Sundaramoorthy1, Tony Ly1,3, Tom Owen-Hughes1, Angus I Lamond1* 1Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom; 2Charles Perkins Centre, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia; 3Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom Abstract We describe Ribo Mega-SEC, a powerful approach for the separation and biochemical analysis of mammalian polysomes and ribosomal subunits using Size Exclusion Chromatography and uHPLC. Using extracts from either cells, or tissues, polysomes can be separated within 15 min from sample injection to fraction collection. Ribo Mega-SEC shows translating ribosomes exist predominantly in polysome complexes in human cell lines and mouse liver tissue. Changes in polysomes are easily quantified between treatments, such as the cellular response to amino acid starvation. Ribo Mega-SEC is shown to provide an efficient, convenient and highly reproducible method for studying functional translation complexes. We show that Ribo Mega-SEC is readily combined with high-throughput MS-based proteomics to characterize proteins associated with polysomes and ribosomal subunits. It also facilitates isolation of complexes for electron microscopy and structural studies. *For correspondence: DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.36530.001
[email protected] †These authors contributed equally to this work Introduction Competing interests: The The ribosome is a large RNA-protein complex, comprising four ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) and >80 authors declare that no ribosomal proteins (RPs), which coordinates mRNA-templated protein synthesis.