Evidence for a second class of S-adenosylmethionine riboswitches and other regulatory RNA motifs in alpha-proteobacteria.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Riboswitches are RNA elements in the 5' untranslated leaders of bacterial mRNAs that directly sense the levels of specific metabolites with a structurally conserved aptamer domain to regulate expression of downstream genes. Riboswitches are most common in the genomes of low GC Gram-positive bacteria (for example, Bacillus subtilis contains examples of all known riboswitches), and some riboswitch classes seem to be restricted to this group.

Results

We used comparative sequence analysis and structural probing to identify five RNA elements (serC, speF, suhB, ybhL, and metA) that reside in the intergenic regions of Agrobacterium tumefaciens and many other alpha-proteobacteria. One of these, the metA motif, is found upstream of methionine biosynthesis genes and binds S

SUBMITTER: Corbino KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1273637 | biostudies-literature | 2005

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature