Department of Biology, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California 91360, United States.
Laboratory of Nucleic Acids, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, United States.
Biochemistry. 2023 Oct 17;62(20):2902-2907. doi: 10.1021/acs.biochem.3c00368. Epub 2023 Sep 12.
RNA thermometers are noncoding RNA structures located in the 5' untranslated regions (UTRs) of genes that regulate gene expression through temperature-dependent conformational changes. The fourU class of RNA thermometers contains a specific motif in which four consecutive uracil nucleotides are predicted to base pair with the Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequence in a stem. We employed a bioinformatic search to discover a fourU RNA thermometer in the 5'-UTR of the gene of the phage SPβc2, a bacteriophage that infects 168. encodes an autolysin enzyme, -acetylmuramoyl-l-alanine amidase, which is involved in the lytic life cycle of the SPβ prophage. We have biochemically validated the predicted RNA thermometer in the 5'-UTR of the gene. Our study suggests that RNA thermometers may play an underappreciated yet critical role in the lytic life cycle of bacteriophages.
RNA 温度计是位于基因 5'非翻译区（UTR）的非编码 RNA 结构，通过温度依赖的构象变化来调节基因表达。U 类 RNA 温度计包含一个特定的基序，其中四个连续的尿嘧啶核苷酸预测与茎中的 Shine-Dalgarno（SD）序列形成碱基对。我们使用生物信息学搜索在噬菌体 SPβc2 的基因 5'-UTR 中发现了一个 U 类 RNA 温度计，噬菌体 SPβc2 感染 168。 基因编码一种自溶酶，-乙酰胞壁酰-l-丙氨酸酰胺酶，它参与 SPβ 原噬菌体的裂解生命周期。我们已经对 基因 5'-UTR 中预测的 RNA 温度计进行了生化验证。我们的研究表明，RNA 温度计在噬菌体的裂解生命周期中可能起着被低估但至关重要的作用。
