Roberts Sabrina B, Spencer-Smith Russell, Shah Mahwish, Nebel Jean-Christophe, Cook Richard T, Snyder Lori A S
School of Life Sciences, Pharmacy, and Chemistry, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2EE, UK.
Department of Pharmacology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA.
Microorganisms. 2016 Aug 25;4(3):31. doi: 10.3390/microorganisms4030031.
Neisseria gonorrhoeae is capable of causing gonorrhoea and more complex diseases in the human host. Neisseria meningitidis is a closely related pathogen that shares many of the same genomic features and virulence factors, but causes the life threatening diseases meningococcal meningitis and septicaemia. The importance of non-coding RNAs in gene regulation has become increasingly evident having been demonstrated to be involved in regulons responsible for iron acquisition, antigenic variation, and virulence. Neisseria spp. contain an IS-like element, the Correia Repeat Enclosed Element, which has been predicted to be mobile within the genomes or to have been in the past. This repeat, present in over 100 copies in the genome, has the ability to alter gene expression and regulation in several ways. We reveal here that Correia Repeat Enclosed Elements tend to be near non-coding RNAs in the Neisseria spp., especially N. gonorrhoeae. These results suggest that Correia Repeat Enclosed Elements may have disrupted ancestral regulatory networks not just through their influence on regulatory proteins but also for non-coding RNAs.
淋病奈瑟菌能够在人类宿主中引发淋病以及更复杂的疾病。脑膜炎奈瑟菌是一种密切相关的病原体，具有许多相同的基因组特征和毒力因子，但会导致危及生命的疾病——脑膜炎球菌性脑膜炎和败血症。非编码RNA在基因调控中的重要性已日益明显，已证明其参与负责铁获取、抗原变异和毒力的调控子。奈瑟菌属含有一种类似插入序列的元件，即科雷亚重复封闭元件，据预测它在基因组内是可移动的，或者在过去是可移动的。这种重复序列在基因组中存在超过100个拷贝，能够以多种方式改变基因表达和调控。我们在此揭示，科雷亚重复封闭元件在奈瑟菌属中，尤其是淋病奈瑟菌中，倾向于靠近非编码RNA。这些结果表明，科雷亚重复封闭元件可能不仅通过对调控蛋白的影响，还通过对非编码RNA的影响，破坏了祖先的调控网络。
