Structural transitions during large ribosomal subunit maturation analyzed by tethered nuclease structure probing in S. cerevisiae

Yeast large ribosomal subunit (LSU) precursors are subject to substantial changes in protein composition during their maturation due to coordinated transient interactions with a large number of ribosome biogenesis factors and due to the assembly of ribosomal proteins. These compositional changes go along with stepwise processing of LSU rRNA precursors and with specific rRNA folding events, as revealed by recent cryo-electron microscopy analyses of late nuclear and cytoplasmic LSU precursors. Here we aimed to analyze changes in the spatial rRNA surrounding of selected ribosomal proteins during yeast LSU maturation. For this we combined a recently developed tethered tertiary structure probing approach with both targeted and high throughput readout strategies. Several structural features of late LSU precursors were faithfully detected by this procedure. In addition, the obtained data let us suggest that early rRNA precursor processing events are accompanied by a global transition from a flexible to a spatially restricted rRNA conformation. For intermediate LSU precursors a number of structural hallmarks could be addressed which include the fold of the internal transcribed spacer between 5.8S rRNA and 25S rRNA, the orientation of the central protuberance and the spatial organization of the interface between LSU rRNA domains I and III.