Transposase assisted tagmentation of RNA/DNA hybrid duplexes

Tn5-mediated transposition of double-strand DNA has been widely utilized in various high-throughput sequencing applications. Here, we report that the Tn5 transposase is also capable of direct tagmentation of RNA/DNA hybrids in vitro. As a proof-of-concept application, we utilized this activity to replace the traditional library construction procedure of RNA sequencing, which contains many laborious and time-consuming processes. Results of activity of transposase assisted RNA/DNA hybrids co-tagmentation (termed "ATRAC-seq") are comparable to traditional RNA-seq methods in terms of gene number, gene body coverage and gene expression analysis; at the meantime, ATRAC-seq enables a one-tube library construction protocol and hence is more rapid (within 8 h) and convenient. We expect this tagmentation activity on RNA/DNA hybrids to have broad potentials on RNA biology and chromatin research.