User:Michelle Meyer BC/S2

The E. coli S2-interacting autogenous regulatory RNA exhibits wide distribution across bacterial phyla and regulates rpsB and tsf, which encode ribosomal protein S2 and EF-Ts, respectively. No mechanistic studies have been performed with this RNA, but it appears to control translation, and RNA is responsive to S2 homologues from other Gammaproteobacteria species. This RNA, unlike other RNA autogenous regulatory elements, is not an obvious mimic of the ribosomal RNA, and its binding partner is not a primary RNA binding protein. The S2-interacting RNA was independently identified computationally in alphaproteobacteria by Meyer et al. in 2009, and originally was described as part of an sRNA screen in E. coli (t44 RNA). The E. coli native transcript is considerably longer than the conserved S2-binding site, but deletion experiments have shown that only the portion represented in the alignment is important for regulation. Additionally, deletion of the ‘GGU’ internal loop, predicted to form a pseudoknot, abolishes activity.