A Single-copy Knock In Translating Ribosome ImmunoPrecipitation tool kit for tissue specific profiling of actively translated mRNAs in C. elegans. Wester and Lanjuin et al.

Epitope tagged ribosomal subunits are expressed in defined cell populations and used to pull down ribosomes and their associated mRNAs, providing a snapshot of cell-type specific translation occurring in that space and time. Current TRAP toolkits available to the C. elegans community have been built using multi-copy arrays, randomly integrated in the genome.

Here we introduce a Single-copy Knock In Translating Ribosome ImmunoPrecipitation (SKI TRIP) tool kit, a collection of C. elegans strains engineered by CRISPR in which tissue specific expression of FLAG tagged ribosomal subunit protein RPL-22 is driven by cassettes present in single copy from defined sites in the genome. In depth characterization of the SKI TRIP strains and methodology shows that 3xFLAG tagged RPL-22 expressed from its endogenous locus or within defined cell types incorporates into actively translating ribosomes and can be used to efficiently and cleanly pull down cell-type specific transcripts without impacting overall mRNA translation or fitness of the animal.