Instituto de Agrobiotecnología, IdAB, CSIC-Gobierno de Navarra, Mutilva, Spain.
Laboratory of Microbial Pathogenesis, Navarrabiomed-Complejo Hospitalario de Navarra (CHN)-Universidad Pública de Navarra (UPNA), IdiSNA, Pamplona, Spain.
Mol Microbiol. 2020 Mar;113(3):593-602. doi: 10.1111/mmi.14456.
In the last decade, the implementation of high-throughput methods for RNA profiling has uncovered that a large part of the bacterial genome is transcribed well beyond the boundaries of known genes. Therefore, the transcriptional space of a gene very often invades the space of a neighbouring gene, creating large regions of overlapping transcription. The biological significance of these findings was initially regarded with scepticism. However, mounting evidence suggests that overlapping transcription between neighbouring genes conforms to regulatory purposes and provides new strategies for coordinating bacterial gene expression. In this MicroReview, considering the discoveries made in a pioneering transcriptome analysis performed on Listeria monocytogenes as a starting point, we discuss the progress in understanding the biological meaning of overlapping transcription that has given rise to the excludon concept. We also discuss new conditional transcriptional termination events that create antisense RNAs depending on the metabolite concentrations and new genomic arrangements, known as noncontiguous operons, which contain an interspersed gene that is transcribed in the opposite direction to the rest of the operon.
在过去的十年中，高通量 RNA 分析方法的实施揭示了细菌基因组的很大一部分转录远远超出了已知基因的边界。因此，一个基因的转录空间经常会侵入相邻基因的空间，从而产生大量重叠转录区域。这些发现的生物学意义最初受到怀疑。然而，越来越多的证据表明，相邻基因之间的重叠转录符合调节目的，并为协调细菌基因表达提供了新的策略。在这篇微型综述中，我们以李斯特菌单核细胞增生李斯特菌的开创性转录组分析为起点，讨论了对重叠转录生物学意义的理解进展，该分析导致了排除子的概念的产生。我们还讨论了新的条件性转录终止事件，根据代谢物浓度产生反义 RNA，以及新的基因组排列，称为非连续操纵子，其中包含一个散布的基因，以与操纵子其余部分相反的方向转录。
