Summary
The participation of transfer RNAs (tRNAs) in fundamental aspects of biology and disease necessitates an accurate, experimentally confirmed annotation of tRNA genes, and curation of tRNA sequences. This has been challenging, because RNA secondary structure, nucleotide modifications and tRNA gene multiplicity, complicate sequencing and mapping efforts. To address these issues, we developed hydro-tRNAseq, a method based on partial alkaline RNA hydrolysis that generates fragments amenable for sequencing. To identify transcribed tRNA genes, we further complemented this approach with Photoactivatable Crosslinking and Immunoprecipitation (PAR-CLIP) of SSB/La, a conserved protein involved in pre-tRNA processing. Our results show that approximately half of all predicted tRNA genes are transcribed in human cells. We also report nucleotide modification sites, their order of introduction, and identify tRNA leaders, trailers and introns. By using complementary sequencing-based methodologies we present a human tRNA atlas, and determine expression levels of mature and processing intermediates of tRNAs in human cells.