Biology:Fibro-purF RNA motif
| Fibro-purF | |
|---|---|
 Consensus secondary structure and sequence conservation of Fibro-purF RNA | |
| Identifiers | |
| Symbol | Fibro-purF |
| Rfam | RF02974 |
| Other data | |
| RNA type | Cis-reg |
| SO | 0005836 |
| PDB structures | PDBe |
The Fibro-purF RNA motif is a conserved RNA structure that was discovered by bioinformatics.[1] Fibro-purF motif RNAs are found in Fibrobacterota, a group of bacteria that are common in cow rumen. Additionally, the RNAs are found in metagenomic sequences of DNA isolated from cow rumen.
Fibro-purF motif RNAs likely function as cis-regulatory elements, in view of their positions upstream of protein-coding genes. In fact, instances of the Fibro-purF RNA motif are often located nearby to the predicted Shine-Dalgarno sequence of the downstream gene. This arrangement is consistent with a model of cis-regulation where the RNA allosterically controls access to the Shine-Dalgarno sequence, thus regulating the gene translationally.
All known Fibro-purF RNAs are found upstream of purF genes, which encode amidophosphoribosyltransferase, which participates in the biosynthesis of biological purine molecules. The Fibro-purF motif is found only in closely related organisms. As a result, the RNAs do not exhibit a high degree of mutations when compared, and it was difficult[1] to study the RNA's secondary structure by covariation methods. As a result, the predicted secondary structure is uncertain in some places.
The Fibro-purF RNA motif was considered[1] a potential candidate riboswitch, but no ligand has been established, as of 2022. However, experiments have confirmed that the RNA motif corresponds to a regulatory element and in vitro experiments corroborate the predicted structure.[2] Due to the instability of the proposed ligand,[2][1] 5-phospho-D-ribosylamine, direct experiments to confirm this ligand have not yet been conducted.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 "Detection of 224 candidate structured RNAs by comparative analysis of specific subsets of intergenic regions". Nucleic Acids Res. 45 (18): 10811–10823. October 2017. doi:10.1093/nar/gkx699. PMID 28977401.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "A rare bacterial RNA motif is implicated in the regulation of the purF gene whose encoded enzyme synthesizes phosphoribosylamine". RNA 26 (12): 1838–1846. December 2020. doi:10.1261/rna.077313.120. PMID 32843366.
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