Chemical RNA Digestion Enables Robust RNA-binding Site Mapping at Single Amino Acid Resolution

RNA-binding sites (RBSs) can be identified by liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry analyses of the protein-RNA conjugates created by crosslinking, but RBS mapping remains highly challenging due to the complexity of the formed RNA adducts. Here, we introduce RBS-ID, a method that uses hydrofluoride to fully cleave RNA into mono-nucleosides, thereby minimizing the search space to drastically enhance coverage and to reach single amino acid resolution. Moreover, the simple mono-nucleoside adducts offer a confident and quantitative measure of direct RNA-protein interaction. Using RBS-ID, we profiled ~2,000 human RBSs and probed Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 to discover residues important for genome editing.