Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
RNA Biol. 2011 Jan-Feb;8(1):82-9. doi: 10.4161/rna.8.1.13864. Epub 2011 Jan 1.
The continued expansion of microbial sequence data has allowed for the detection of an increasing number of conserved RNA motifs by using comparative sequence analysis. Recently, we reported the discovery of two structured non-coding RNA motifs, called glnA and Downstream-peptide, that have similarity in sequence and secondary structure. In this report, we describe data demonstrating that representatives of both RNA motifs selectively bind the amino acid L-glutamine. These glutamine aptamers are found exclusively in cyanobacteria and marine metagenomic sequences, wherein several glnA RNA representatives reside upstream of genes involved in nitrogen metabolism. These motifs have genomic distributions that are consistent with a gene regulation function, suggesting they are components of glutamine-responsive riboswitches. Thus, our findings implicate glutamine as a regulator of cyanobacterial nitrogen metabolism pathways. Furthermore, our findings expand the collection of natural aptamer classes that bind amino acids to include glycine, lysine and glutamine.
微生物序列数据的不断扩展，使得通过比较序列分析来检测越来越多的保守 RNA 基序成为可能。最近，我们报道了两个结构非编码 RNA 基序的发现，称为 glnA 和 Downstream-peptide，它们在序列和二级结构上具有相似性。在本报告中，我们描述了数据表明这两个 RNA 基序的代表物都能选择性地结合氨基酸 L-谷氨酰胺。这些谷氨酰胺适体仅存在于蓝藻和海洋宏基因组序列中，其中几个 glnA RNA 代表物位于参与氮代谢的基因上游。这些基序的基因组分布与基因调控功能一致，表明它们是谷氨酰胺反应性核糖开关的组成部分。因此，我们的发现表明谷氨酰胺是蓝藻氮代谢途径的调节剂。此外，我们的发现扩展了结合氨基酸的天然适体类别的集合，包括甘氨酸、赖氨酸和谷氨酰胺。
