Bacterial Small RNA Regulators: Versatile Roles and Rapidly Evolving Variations

Overview

Journal Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol

Specialties Biology
Molecular Biology

Date 2010 Oct 29

PMID 20980440

Citations 405

Authors

Susan Gottesman

Gisela Storz

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Small RNA regulators (sRNAs) have been identified in a wide range of bacteria and found to play critical regulatory roles in many processes. The major families of sRNAs include true antisense RNAs, synthesized from the strand complementary to the mRNA they regulate, sRNAs that also act by pairing but have limited complementarity with their targets, and sRNAs that regulate proteins by binding to and affecting protein activity. The sRNAs with limited complementarity are akin to eukaryotic microRNAs in their ability to modulate the activity and stability of multiple mRNAs. In many bacterial species, the RNA chaperone Hfq is required to promote pairing between these sRNAs and their target mRNAs. Understanding the evolution of regulatory sRNAs remains a challenge; sRNA genes show evidence of duplication and horizontal transfer but also could be evolved from tRNAs, mRNAs or random transcription.

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