emrB-Lactobacillus RNA motif


The emrB-Lactobacillus RNA motif is a conserved RNA structure that was discovered by bioinformatics.[1] emrB-Lactobacillus motifs are found in bacteria of the genus Lactobacillus.

emrB-Lactobacillus
Consensus secondary structure and sequence conservation of emrB-Lactobacillus RNA
Identifiers
SymbolemrB-Lactobacillus
RfamRF02971
Other data
RNA typeGene; sRNA
SOSO:0001263
PDB structuresPDBe

emrB-Lactobacillus RNAs are generally located in the 5′ untranslated regions of genes that encode EmrB, a kind of transporter. This fact suggests that the RNAs function as cis-regulatory elements. However, two factors call this conclusion into question. First, emrB-Lactobacillus RNAs are also located nearby to their upstream genes. Regulation of an upstream gene is unusual in bacteria. Second, some emrB-Lactobacillus RNAs are located nearby to transposase genes. The presence of these genes could suggest that emrB-Lactobacillus RNAs have a function related to transposons, although it is also consistent with the view that the apparent transposons have merely replicated nearby to the emrB-Lactobacillus RNAs by coincidence, and that there is no functional relationship between the two entities. Thus, it is unknown whether emrB-Lactobacillus RNAs function as cis-regulatory RNAs or as small RNAs.

References

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  1. ^ Weinberg Z, Lünse CE, Corbino KA, Ames TD, Nelson JW, Roth A, Perkins KR, Sherlock ME, Breaker RR (October 2017). "Detection of 224 candidate structured RNAs by comparative analysis of specific subsets of intergenic regions". Nucleic Acids Res. 45 (18): 10811–10823. doi:10.1093/nar/gkx699. PMC 5737381. PMID 28977401.