{"doi":"10.1093/nar/gkaa526","title":"Processing by RNase 1 forms tRNA halves and distinct Y RNA fragments in the extracellular environment","abstract":"Extracellular RNAs participate in intercellular communication, and are being studied as promising minimally invasive diagnostic markers. Several studies in recent years showed that tRNA halves and distinct Y RNA fragments are abundant in the extracellular space, including in biofluids. While their regulatory and diagnostic potential has gained a substantial amount of attention, the biogenesis of these extracellular RNA fragments remains largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that these fragments are produced by RNase 1, a highly active secreted nuclease. We use RNA sequencing to investigate the effect of a null mutation of RNase 1 on the levels of tRNA halves and Y RNA fragments in the extracellular environment of cultured human cells. We complement and extend our RNA sequencing results with northern blots, showing that tRNAs and Y RNAs in the non-vesicular extracellular compartment are released from cells as full-length precursors and are subsequently cleaved to distinct fragments. In support of these results, formation of tRNA halves is recapitulated by recombinant human RNase 1 in our in vitro assay. These findings assign a novel function for RNase 1, and position it as a strong candidate for generation of tRNA halves and Y RNA fragments in biofluids.","journal":"Nucleic Acids Research","year":2020,"id":58673,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":71,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9461,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":307831,"name":"Dinar Yunusov","orcid":"0000-0003-3478-7203","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307832,"name":"Kenneth Chang","orcid":"0000-0002-5833-3655","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11811,"name":"T Gingeras","orcid":"0000-0001-9106-3573","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":78915,"name":"Gal Nechooshtan","orcid":"0000-0002-8994-8580","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":86,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:07:33.416320Z","pmid":"32609822","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}