古菌信使RNA 5′和3′非编码区特性研究

利用x^2分析方法,对6种古菌起始密码子上游和终止密码子下游各50位非编码区进行了分析。结果表明,Methanopyrus kandleri和Aeropyrum pernix中存在一个与大肠杆菌SD序列极为相似的高保守区（φ区）。但φ区的核苷酸并不能和其16S rRNA 3′端序列的反SD序列很好的配对;Pyrobaculum aerophilum缺乏φ区,但在其起始密码子上游20～30核苷酸处却存在另一个高度保守的区域,该区域在大肠杆菌和酵母中均缺乏;而其它3种古菌却同时存在这2个区域。6种古菌在终止密码子下游第一位的核苷酸非常保守,存在四核苷酸终止信号;在终止密码子后约20个核苷酸范围内保守性相对较高,其中某些核苷酸在翻译终止过程中可能发挥调控作用。     

编码区和非编码区SSR标记对水稻类群的比较研究

设计14对水稻编码区SSR引物和选取已公布的非编码区SSR引物12对、编码区SSR引物3对,采用SSR技术,对29个标记在60个水稻材料中的多态性进行分析。结果表明,编码区SSR标记平均检测到3.59个多态性位点,多态信息量PIC(polymorphism information conten)在0.032～P0.853之间,平均值为0.447;非编码区SSR标记平均检测到3.92个多态性位点,PIC在0.063～P0.795之间,平均值为0.521。聚类分析显示,非编码区SSR标记能更加精确地区分来自不同地区的水稻类群,编码区SSR标记也具有良好的多态性,同样可以用于分析水稻的亲缘关系。     

志贺菌耐药性与非编码RNA的关系研究

采用RNA-seq技术对志贺菌耐药性与非编码RNA之间的关系进行研究。首先采用梯度剂量的环丙沙星诱导福氏志贺菌2a标准菌株产生耐药性而获得耐药菌株,然后提取标准菌株与耐药菌株的总RNA进行RNA-seq分析。结果显示,在福氏志贺菌的2个样品中共发现100个候选sRNA,并与sRNA的数据库比对得到注释信息,每个候选sRNA都对应着很多个靶标基因,而且靶标基因的表达也有明显差异。预测这些sRNA可能会通过调控耐药基因和一些与细胞增殖或凋亡相关的基因发挥作用,因此还需要挑选合适的候选sRNA并对其用荧光定量PCR实验进行验证。     

黄病毒基因组RNA5′和3′非编码区的结构和功能

黄病毒是一些世界范围内都很重要的疾病的致病因子,充分了解病毒的复制机制,可筛选阻止病毒复制的抗病毒因子,为疫苗的研制提供理论依据。黄病毒基因组RNA的5′和3′非编码区末端核苷酸都可形成高度保守的二级结构,与病毒的复制和病毒的神经毒力有关。本文对5′和3′非编码区的结构和功能研究进展进行综述。     

细菌非编码RNA及其分子伴侣Hfq

细菌在生存过程中要面对复杂多样的环境,在长期进化过程中,细菌逐渐形成不同的应答机制来感应环境信号的变化,并通过精确的基因表达来调控生理生化反应。基因表达调控可分为转录水平和转录后水平两个方面,对于细菌来说,非编码RNA在转录后调控上发挥着重要的作用,而大多数非编码RNA与靶标m RNA的相互作用过程又离不开Hfq蛋白的辅助。本文综述了非编码RNA的分类、调控特点,伴侣蛋白Hfq的结构、功能以及两者相互作用的机制,以期深入了解非编码RNA及其伴侣蛋白Hfq在转录后调控中发挥的作用。     

核糖体展示技术在非编码核酸研究中的应用

非编码RNA(non-coding RNA)是一类内源性的不具有蛋白质编码功能的RNA分子,在细胞的生长增殖、发育、核内运输,甚至在肿瘤的发生中发挥着重要的作用。核糖体展示技术(ribosome profiling)是多聚核糖体分离和深度测序技术(deep sequencing)相结合的新兴组学技术,可以精确地测定正在被翻译的转录本并具有组学广度。对非编码RNA研究而言,这既是一个新的高度又是一门新的技术。系统阐述了核糖体展示技术的实验原理、目前研究取得的进展,以及在非编码RNA调控机理中的应用。     

非编码小RNA BSR0602在布鲁菌环境适应能力中的调控作用

BSR0602是位于布鲁菌染色体上的非编码小RNA,在前期研究中我们发现,BSR0602与布鲁菌的胞内生存能力相关.为了进一步研究BSR0602对布鲁菌胞内环境适应能力的调控作用,采用双向电泳技术对布鲁菌野生株16M和BSR0602过表达株的全菌蛋白质谱进行比较分析.结果显示,BSR0602过表达后,布鲁菌转运代谢蛋白和压力适应蛋白的表达发生变化. qRT-PCR和HIS表位标记实验结果进一步证实,BSR0602在转录和翻译水平均影响氧压力适应蛋白SodA的表达.相关表型实验结果显示,BSR0602过表达株对氧压力更为敏感,证实了BSR0602在布鲁菌适应氧压力中的作用.结果表明,非编码小RNA BSR0602作为布鲁菌的转录后调控因子,可通过调控压力适应蛋白的表达来影响布鲁菌的压力适应能力和胞内生存.     

金黄色葡萄球菌非编码小RNA的研究进展

金黄色葡萄球菌(Staphylococcus aureus,S.aureus)是困扰全球公共卫生及人类健康的重要病原菌,其引起的各种临床感染与该菌表达的多种毒力因子密切相关,而这些毒力因子表达受到调节性因子的精确调控,在细菌致病机制中发挥着核心作用。非编码小RNA(Small non-coding RNA,s RNA)是基因表达的一类重要调节因子,可使细菌对环境因素做出反应,调节其应激适应性及毒力因子表达。但到目前为止,仅少数金黄色葡萄球菌s RNA的生物学功能得到阐述。本文将针对这些调节性s RNA的研究进展作一综述。     

粟PsbA基因5′未端非编码区的结构特征

本文对粟（Sctcriaitailica,谷称：谷子）叶绿体基因pabA上22kb的 EcoRI片段进行了克隆。该基因5′－未端非编码区就位于这个片段上。序列分析显示这个编码区存在着与原核生物基因类似的启动子结构：其“－10”区序列为TATACT,与核生物的仅相差一个核苷酸;“－35”区序列为TTGACA,与原核生物的完全相同。另一方面,在“－10”和“－35”区之间还存在着一个类似真核生物核基因启动子结构的“TATATA”保守序列。这表明粟psbA基因的启动子既具有原核基因的特征、又具有真核基因的特征。粟pabA基因的mRNA前导序列区长87bp,与高粱的完全一致。可以推测：禾本科C3和C4植物中,psbA基因mRNA前导序列区的差异可能具有某种普通性。计算机分析结果显示,6种植物的psbS基因mRNA前导序列区内均能形成小的茎环结构,而且这段“CTATTTT”额外序列恰好位于茎环结构中,造成了6种植物间茎环大小的差异。可能,这个小的二级结构对psbA基因的表达调控有一定的影响。     

革兰氏阳性菌非编码小RNA的研究进展

sRNA（非编码小RNA）通过碱基配对的方式与靶mRNA结合,抑制或激活转录过程、调节蛋白质的表达,以核酸的形式发挥其生物学功能。随着RNA深度测序（RNAseq）技术、生物信息学预测以及实验分析手段的日渐发展和完善,数以百计的sRNA被发现并得到验证。作为转录后调控因子,sRNA因在诸多生理过程中起到了关键的调节作用而得到了广泛的关注。以革兰氏阳性菌为切入点,总结了近年来sRNA的筛选、鉴定和功能研究等方面取得的进展,梳理分析了sRNA调控与毒力因子、群体感应、铁代谢和双组分系统等之间的内在联系,并展望了sRNA未来的研究方向。     

Characterization of the 5' and 3' untranslated regions in murine mdm2 mRNAs

The murine double minute 2 (mdm2) gene is essential for embryogenesis in mice that express the p53 tumor suppressor protein. Mdm2 levels must be regulated tightly because overexpression of mdm2 contributes to tumorigenesis. We investigated whether the 5' and 3' untranslated regions (UTRs) of murine mdm2 affect the expression of MDM2 proteins. Induction of mdm2 expression by p53 results in synthesis of an mdm2 mRNA with a short 5' UTR. The long 5' UTR increases internal initiation of translation of a minor MDM2 protein, p76(MDM2), without affecting the efficiency of translation of the full-length p90(MDM2). We discovered two alternative 3' untranslated regions in murine mdm2 mRNA expressed in the testis. The longer 3' UTR contains a consensus instability element, but mdm2 mRNAs containing the long and short 3' UTRs have comparable half-lives. The 3' UTRs do not affect either initiation codon use or translation efficiency. Thus, the murine 5' UTR, but not the 3'UTR, influences the ratio of the two MDM2 proteins but neither UTR affects MDM2 abundance significantly.     

UTRdb: a specialized database of 5'- and 3'-untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs.

The important role the untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs may play in gene regulation and expression is now widely acknowledged. For this reason we developed UTRdb, a specialized database of 5'- and 3'-untranslated sequences of eukaryotic mRNAs cleaned from redundancy. UTRdb entries are enriched with specialized information not present in the primary databases, including the presence of functional patterns already demonstrated by experimental analysis to have some functional role. A collection of such patterns is being collected in UTRsite database (http://bio-www.ba.cnr.it:8000/srs5/) which can also be used with appropriate computational tools to detect known functional patterns contained in mRNA untranslated regions.     

Potential open reading frames within 5'-untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs

It is known that 5'-untranslated sequences of eukaryotic mRNA often contain AUG triplets, which may serve as the sites of translation initiation. It is thought that these leader open reading frames can fulfil the regulatory functions and encode functionally active proteins. However, they have been incompletely characterized. The article deals with the context organization of leader reading frames of eukaryotic mRNAs. It has been shown that their characteristics correlate with the position relative to the protein-encoding sequence, which may be associated with the efficiency of initiation of translation.     

UTRdb: a specialized database of 5' and 3' untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs.

The 5' and 3' untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs may play a crucial role in the regulation of gene expression controlling mRNA localization, stability and translational efficiency. For this reason we developed UTRdb (http://bigarea.area.ba.cnr.it:8000/BioWWW/#U TRdb), a specialized database of 5' and 3' untranslated sequences of eukaryotic mRNAs cleaned from redundancy. UTRdb entries are enriched with specialized information not present in the primary databases including the presence of nucleotide sequence patterns already demonstrated by experimental analysis to have some functional role. All these patterns have been collected in the UTRsite database so that it is possible to search any input sequence for the presence of annotated functional motifs. Furthermore, UTRdb entries have been annotated for the presence of repetitive elements.     

Data mining of imperfect double-stranded RNA in 3' untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs

Recent developments in the study of RNA silencing indicate that double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) can be used in eukaryotes to block expression of a corresponding cellular gene. There is also a large class of small non-coding RNAs having potential to form a distinct, stable stem-loop in numbers of eukaryotic genomes. We had reported that a large imperfect dsRNA structure with hundreds of base-pairs (bp) in the 3' untranslated region (3' UTR) of cytotoxic ribonuclease was correlated with the translation suppression. In this study, we search for such dsRNAs in a 3' UTR database. The occurrence rate of large dsRNA in 3' UTRs ranges from 0.01% in plant to 0.30% in vertebrate mRNAs. However, small imperfect dsRNAs of ~ 30 bp are much more prevalent than large ones. The small dsRNAs are statistically very significant and uniquely well-ordered. Most of them have the conserved structural features of pre-miRNAs. Our data mining of the dsRNAs in the 3' UTR database can be used to explore RNA-based regulation of gene expression.