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Bridging sequence-structure motifs and genetic variants for genome-wide dynamic RNA-protein interaction profiling

  • Yubo Wang
  • , Haoran Zhu
  • , Gaoyang Hao
  • , Yanchi Su
  • , Zhuohan Yu
  • , Yuning Yang
  • , Fuzhou Wang
  • , Xingjian Chen
  • , Ka-chun Wong
  • , Xiangtao Li*
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal Publications and Reviews › RGC 21 - Publication in refereed journal › peer-review

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Abstract

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) often recognize complex RNA secondary structure motifs, and these interactions can vary between cell lines. However, no current computational model can explain the dynamic behavior of RNA sequence-structure motifs across multiple cell lines and link these dynamics to the functional impact of genetic variation. Here we show BRIDGE, an end-to-end unified model that bridges sequence-structure motifs with the functional effects of noncoding genetic variants, thereby enabling genome-wide analysis of dynamic RNA-protein interaction profiles. Our evaluations demonstrate that BRIDGE outperforms existing state-of-the-art methods in static single cell line predictions. Without any retraining, the framework transfers to unseen cellular contexts, thereby revealing a conserved yet adaptable grammar of RNA recognition. Attention-guided interpretation identified 3,571 integrative motifs, including motifs associated with splicing regulation. Moreover, genome-wide in-silico perturbation provides an interpretable view of RBP-binding disruption across variant classes, including splice-region and pathogenic alleles. © The Author(s) 2026.
Original languageEnglish
Article number6458
Number of pages27
JournalNature Communications
Volume17
Online published15 May 2026
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2026

Funding

Figures\u00A01a, 2a, 3a, h, 6a, 7a, j and 8a\u2013c were created using BioRender (https://www.biorender.com). X.L. discloses support for the research and publication of this work from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 62472195 and 62076109], the Natural Science Foundation of Jilin Province [grant number 20260102302JC], and the Noncommunicable Chronic Diseases-National Science and Technology Major Project [grant numbers 2026ZD0554000 and 2026ZD0554005].

Publisher's Copyright Statement

  • This full text is made available under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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