Structural analysis of human ARS2 as a platform for co-transcriptional RNA sorting

ARS2 is a highly conserved metazoan protein involved in numerous aspects of nuclear RNA metabolism. As a direct partner of the nuclear cap-binding complex (CBC), it mediates interactions with diverse RNA processing and transport machineries in a transcript-dependent manner. Here, we present the human ARS2 crystal structure, which exhibits similarities and metazoan-specific differences to the plant homologue SERRATE, most notably an additional RRM domain. We present biochemical, biophysical and cellular inter-actome data comparing wild type and mutant ARS2 that identify regions critical for interactions with FLASH (involved in histone mRNA biogenesis), NCBP3 (a putative cap-binding protein involved in mRNA export) and single-stranded RNA. We show that FLASH and NCBP3 have overlapping binding sites on ARS2 and that CBC-ARS2-NCBP3 form a ternary complex that is mutually exclusive with CBC-ARS-PHAX (involved in snRNA export). Our results support that mutually exclusive higher-order CBC-ARS2 complexes are critical in determining Pol II transcript fate.