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Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms

Riboswitches are RNA elements involved in regulating genes that participate in the biosynthesis or transport of essential metabolites. They are characterized by their ability to recognize their target molecules with high affinity and specificity. Riboswitches are commonly cotranscribed with their ta...

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Autores principales: Serrano-Gutiérrez, Mariela, Merino, Enrique
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9943018/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36809273
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281744
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author Serrano-Gutiérrez, Mariela
Merino, Enrique
author_facet Serrano-Gutiérrez, Mariela
Merino, Enrique
author_sort Serrano-Gutiérrez, Mariela
collection PubMed
description Riboswitches are RNA elements involved in regulating genes that participate in the biosynthesis or transport of essential metabolites. They are characterized by their ability to recognize their target molecules with high affinity and specificity. Riboswitches are commonly cotranscribed with their target genes and are located at the 5’ end of their transcriptional units. To date, only two exceptional cases of riboswitches being situated at the 3’ end and transcribing in the antisense direction of their regulated genes have been described. The first case involves a SAM riboswitch located at the 3’ end of the ubiG-mccB-mccA operon in Clostridium acetobutylicum involved in converting methionine to cysteine. The second case concerns a Cobalamin riboswitch in Listeria monocytogenes that regulates the transcription factor PocR related to this organism’s pathogenic process. In almost a decade since the first descriptions of antisense-acting riboswitches, no new examples have been described. In this work, we performed a computational analysis to identify new examples of antisense-acting riboswitches. We found 292 cases in which, according to the available information, we infer that the expected regulation of the riboswitch is consistent with the signaling molecule it senses and the metabolic function of the regulated gene. The metabolic implications of this novel type of regulation are thoroughly discussed.
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spelling pubmed-99430182023-02-22 Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms Serrano-Gutiérrez, Mariela Merino, Enrique PLoS One Research Article Riboswitches are RNA elements involved in regulating genes that participate in the biosynthesis or transport of essential metabolites. They are characterized by their ability to recognize their target molecules with high affinity and specificity. Riboswitches are commonly cotranscribed with their target genes and are located at the 5’ end of their transcriptional units. To date, only two exceptional cases of riboswitches being situated at the 3’ end and transcribing in the antisense direction of their regulated genes have been described. The first case involves a SAM riboswitch located at the 3’ end of the ubiG-mccB-mccA operon in Clostridium acetobutylicum involved in converting methionine to cysteine. The second case concerns a Cobalamin riboswitch in Listeria monocytogenes that regulates the transcription factor PocR related to this organism’s pathogenic process. In almost a decade since the first descriptions of antisense-acting riboswitches, no new examples have been described. In this work, we performed a computational analysis to identify new examples of antisense-acting riboswitches. We found 292 cases in which, according to the available information, we infer that the expected regulation of the riboswitch is consistent with the signaling molecule it senses and the metabolic function of the regulated gene. The metabolic implications of this novel type of regulation are thoroughly discussed. Public Library of Science 2023-02-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9943018/ /pubmed/36809273 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281744 Text en © 2023 Serrano-Gutiérrez, Merino https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Serrano-Gutiérrez, Mariela
Merino, Enrique
Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms
title Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms
title_full Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms
title_fullStr Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms
title_full_unstemmed Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms
title_short Antisense-acting riboswitches: A poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms
title_sort antisense-acting riboswitches: a poorly characterized yet important model of transcriptional regulation in prokaryotic organisms
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9943018/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36809273
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281744
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