title: Accelerating Discovery and Functional Analysis of Small RNAs with New Technologies.
abstract: Over the past decade, bacterial small RNAs (sRNAs) have gone from a biological curiosity to being recognized as a major class of regulatory molecules. High-throughput methods for sampling the transcriptional output of bacterial cells demonstrate that sRNAs are universal features of bacterial transcriptomes, are plentiful, and appear to vary extensively over evolutionary time. With ever more bacteria coming under study, the question becomes how can we accelerate the discovery and functional characterization of sRNAs in diverse organisms. New technologies built on high-throughput sequencing are emerging that can rapidly provide global insight into the numbers and functions of sRNAs in bacteria of interest, providing information that can shape hypotheses and guide research. In this review, we describe recent developments in transcriptomics (RNA-seq) and functional genomics that we expect to help us develop an integrated, systems-level view of sRNA biology in bacteria.
authors.affiliation: RNA Biology Group, Institute for Molecular Infection Biology, University of Würzburg, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany; email: lars.barquist@uni-wuerzburg.de , joerg.vogel@uni-wuerzburg.de.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Barquist
authors.affiliation: RNA Biology Group, Institute for Molecular Infection Biology, University of Würzburg, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany; email: lars.barquist@uni-wuerzburg.de , joerg.vogel@uni-wuerzburg.de.
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vogel
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing / Q000379:methods; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis; D012329:RNA, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics; D058727:RNA, Small Untranslated / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D012270:Ribosomes / Q000235:genetics; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA / Q000379:methods*; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D012329:RNA, Bacterial; D058727:RNA, Small Untranslated
keywords: Hfq; RNA-seq; TraDIS; high-throughput technology; noncoding RNA; phenotype mapping; ribosome profiling; small RNA