Pausing guides RNA folding to populate transiently stable RNA structures for riboswitch-based transcription regulation
In bacteria, the regulation of gene expression by cis-acting transcriptional riboswitches located in the 5'-untranslated regions of messenger RNA requires the temporal synchronization of RNA synthesis and ligand binding-dependent conformational refolding. Ligand binding to the aptamer domain of...
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Veröffentlicht in: | eLife 2017-05, Vol.6 |
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Hauptverfasser: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
Format: | Artikel |
Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | In bacteria, the regulation of gene expression by cis-acting transcriptional riboswitches located in the 5'-untranslated regions of messenger RNA requires the temporal synchronization of RNA synthesis and ligand binding-dependent conformational refolding. Ligand binding to the aptamer domain of the riboswitch induces premature termination of the mRNA synthesis of ligand-associated genes due to the coupled formation of 3'-structural elements acting as terminators. To date, there has been no high resolution structural description of the concerted process of synthesis and ligand-induced restructuring of the regulatory RNA element. Here, we show that for the guanine-sensing
riboswitch from
, the conformation of the full-length transcripts is static: it exclusively populates the functional off-state but cannot switch to the on-state, regardless of the presence or absence of ligand. We show that only the combined matching of transcription rates and ligand binding enables transcription intermediates to undergo ligand-dependent conformational refolding. |
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ISSN: | 2050-084X 2050-084X |
DOI: | 10.7554/eLife.21297 |