title: The role of mRNA structure in translational control in bacteria.
abstract: During the past few years, our knowledge on RNA-based regulation in many organisms has tremendously increased. In bacteria, although transcriptional regulatory proteins remain key players in gene regulation, a wide variety of post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms discovered highlights the importance of the mRNA structure in the regulation of gene expression. RNA-dependent regulation largely contributes to rapidly adapt the bacterial metabolism in response to environmental changes, stress and in establishment of virulence. Bacteria exploit the extraordinary ability of mRNA to fold into different structures in response to various signals (environmental cues, ligand binding). Induced mRNA conformational rearrangements can potentially regulate transcription, translation and mRNA stability. The present review focuses on the structures of regulatory regions of mRNA that have evolved to permit productive interactions with trans-acting regulators, such as protein or non-coding RNAs. Finally, we describe how particular properties of these regulatory complexes regulate translation initiation.
authors.affiliation: Architecture et Réactivité de l'ARN, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Geissmann
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Marzi
authors.forename: Pascale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Romby
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000737:chemistry*; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D012333:RNA, Messenger