title: Modular riboswitch toolsets for synthetic genetic control in diverse bacterial species.
abstract: Ligand-dependent control of gene expression is essential for gene functional analysis, target validation, protein production, and metabolic engineering. However, the expression tools currently available are difficult to transfer between species and exhibit limited mechanistic diversity. Here we demonstrate how the modular architecture of purine riboswitches can be exploited to develop orthogonal and chimeric switches that are transferable across diverse bacterial species, modulating either transcription or translation, to provide tunable activation or repression of target gene expression, in response to synthetic non-natural effector molecules. Our novel riboswitch-ligand pairings are shown to regulate physiologically important genes required for bacterial motility in Escherichia coli and cell morphology in Bacillus subtilis. These findings are relevant for future gene function studies and antimicrobial target validation, while providing new modular and orthogonal regulatory components for deployment in synthetic biology regimes.
authors: School of Chemistry, ‡Manchester Institute of Biotechnology and §Faculty of Life Sciences, The University of Manchester , 131 Princess Street, Manchester M1 7DN, United Kingdom.
authors: Christopher J
authors: CJ
authors: Robinson
authors: Helen A
authors: HA
authors: Vincent
authors: Ming-Cheng
authors: MC
authors: Wu
authors: Phillip T
authors: PT
authors: Lowe
authors: Mark S
authors: MS
authors: Dunstan
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Leys
authors: Jason
authors: J
authors: Micklefield
mesh_terms: D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics; D001412:Bacillus subtilis / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000166:cytology / Q000235:genetics*; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D058928:Riboswitch
chemical_list: D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide; D058928:Riboswitch