Bioinformatics dissection of translational landscape of intestinal cell differentiation

The mammalian intestine is renewed every 4–5 days. This high cell turnover makes it a very attractive model for the study of cell differentiation. Even though the key signaling pathways promoting cellular differentiation in the intestine have been largely described, there is still a lack of understanding of the key cellular actors that are necessary to execute them. tRNAs are heterogeneous and highly modified molecules necessary to correctly translate mRNAs into proteins. Interestingly, a growing amount of data suggests that differential expression of tRNA pools plays a key role in defining cellular fate. Here, we aim to tackle the differentiation process from the innovative perspective of tRNA heterogeneity and codon-dependent regulation of translation. To this end, we are generating a novel predictive bioinformatics analysis pipeline that will identify, in the intestine, a set of lineage-specific translational actors to fully characterize the translational landscape of intestinal differentiation programs.