Tissue- and stage-specific landscape of the mouse translatome

Abstract The current understanding of how overall principles of translational control govern the embryo-to-adult transition in mammals is still far from comprehensive. Herein we profiled the translatomes and transcriptomes of six tissues from the mice at embryonic and adult stages and presented the first report of tissue- and stage-specific translational landscape in mice. We quantified the extent of gene expression divergence among different expression layers, tissues and stages, detected significant changes in gene composition and function underlying these divergences and revealed the changing architecture of translational regulation. We further showed that dynamic translational regulation can be largely achieved via modulation of translational efficiency. Translational efficiency could be altered by alternative splicing (AS), upstream and downstream open reading frames (uORFs and dORFs). We revealed AS-mediated translational repression that was exerted in an event type-dependent manner. uORFs and dORFs exhibited mutually exclusive usage and the opposing effects of translational regulation. Furthermore, we discovered many novel microproteins encoded by long noncoding RNAs and demonstrated their regulatory potential and functional relevance. Our data and analyses will facilitate a better understanding of the complexity of translation and translational regulation across tissue and stage spectra and provide an important resource to the translatome research community.