RNA regulators responding to ribosomal protein S15 are frequent in sequence space.

ABSTRACT: There are several natural examples of distinct RNA structures that interact with the same ligand to regulate the expression of homologous genes in different organisms. One essential question regarding this phenomenon is whether such RNA regulators are the result of convergent or divergent evolution. Are the RNAs derived from some common ancestor and diverged to the point where we cannot identify the similarity, or have multiple solutions to the same biological problem arisen independently? A key variable in assessing these alternatives is how frequently such regulators arise within sequence space. Ribosomal protein S15 is autogenously regulated via an RNA regulator in many bacterial species; four apparently distinct regulators have been functionally validated in different bacterial phyla.

SUBMITTER: Slinger BL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5100602 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature