title: The aprE leader is a determinant of extreme mRNA stability in Bacillus subtilis.
abstract: The Bacillus subtilis aprE gene encodes subtilisin, an extracellular proteolytic enzyme produced in stationary phase. The authors examined the stability of aprE mRNA and aprE leader-lacZ fusion mRNA. Both mRNAs were found to be unusually stable, with half-lives longer than 25 min, demonstrating that the aprE leader contains a determinant for extreme mRNA stability. The half-lives were the same in growing and stationary-phase cells. This contrasts with the findings of O. Resnekov et al. (1990) [Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 87, 8355-8359], which suggested a growth-phase-dependent mechanism for decay of aprE mRNA. The discrepancy is explained by the techniques used. Substitution of two bases or deletion of 25 nucleotides in the aprE leader led to a major difference in its predicted secondary structure and resulted in a fivefold reduction of the half-life of aprE mRNA. The authors also determined the half-life of amyE mRNA, which encodes alpha-amylase, another stationary-phase, excreted enzyme and found it to be around 5 min. This shows that extreme stability is not a general property of stationary-phase mRNAs encoding excreted enzymes.
authors: Department of Microbiology, Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden1.
authors: Gustav
authors: G
authors: Hambraeus
authors: Department of Microbiology, Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden1.
authors: Martin
authors: M
authors: Persson
authors: Department of Microbiology, Lund University, Sölvegatan 12, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden1.
authors: Blanka
authors: B
authors: Rutberg
mesh_terms: D020121:5' Untranslated Regions / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D001412:Bacillus subtilis / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000378:metabolism; D001483:Base Sequence; D006207:Half-Life; D007763:Lac Operon; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D020871:RNA Stability; D012329:RNA, Bacterial / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins; D020860:Subtilisin / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D014169:Transformation, Bacterial
chemical_list: D020121:5' Untranslated Regions; D012329:RNA, Bacterial; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins; D020860:Subtilisin