Anand Deepak, Jakkala Kishor, Nair Rashmi Ravindran, Sharan Deepti, Pradhan Atul, Mukkayyan Nagaraja, Ajitkumar Parthasarathi
Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India.
Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Front Microbiol. 2022 Oct 19;13:920117. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.920117. eCollection 2022.
Bacteria regulate FtsZ protein levels through transcriptional and translational mechanisms for proper cell division. A -antisense RNA, StfZ, produced from the intergenic region, was proposed to regulate FtsZ level in . However, its structural identity remained unknown. In this study, we determined the complete sequence of StfZ and identified the isoforms and its promoters. We find that under native physiological conditions, StfZ is expressed at a 1:6 ratio of StfZ: mRNA at all growth phases from three promoters as three isoforms of 366, 474, and 552 nt RNAs. Overexpression of StfZ reduces FtsZ protein level, increases cell length, and blocks cell division without affecting the Z mRNA stability. We did not find differential expression of StfZ under the stress conditions of heat shock, cold shock, or oxidative stress, or at any growth phase. These data indicated that the -encoded StfZ antisense RNA to mRNA may be involved in the fine tuning of mRNA levels available for translation as per the growth-phase-specific requirement at all phases of growth and cell division.
细菌通过转录和翻译机制调节FtsZ蛋白水平，以实现正常的细胞分裂。从基因间区域产生的反义RNA（A -antisense RNA，StfZ）被认为可调节[具体物种]中的FtsZ水平。然而，其结构特性仍不清楚。在本研究中，我们确定了StfZ的完整序列，并鉴定了其异构体及其启动子。我们发现，在天然生理条件下，StfZ从三个启动子以三种异构体形式表达，分别为366、474和552 nt的RNA，在所有生长阶段其与mRNA的表达比例为1:6。StfZ的过表达降低了FtsZ蛋白水平，增加了细胞长度，并阻断了细胞分裂，而不影响Z mRNA的稳定性。我们未发现在热休克、冷休克或氧化应激等应激条件下或任何生长阶段StfZ的表达存在差异。这些数据表明，针对[具体物种]mRNA编码的StfZ反义RNA可能参与了根据生长和细胞分裂各阶段特定生长阶段需求对可用于翻译的mRNA水平进行微调。
