Advances in bacterial transcriptome understanding: From overlapping transcription to the excludon concept

In the last decade, the implementation of high-throughput methods for RNA profiling has uncovered that a large part of the bacterial genome is transcribed well beyond the boundaries of known genes. Therefore, the transcriptional space of a gene very often invades the space of a neighbouring gene, cr...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Toledo-Arana, Alejandro, Lasa, Íñigo
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versão publicada
Data de publicação:2020
País:España
Recursos:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositório:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/227759
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/227759
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Antisense RNAs
Excludon
Noncontiguous operon
Overlapping transcription
UTRs
Descrição
Resumo:In the last decade, the implementation of high-throughput methods for RNA profiling has uncovered that a large part of the bacterial genome is transcribed well beyond the boundaries of known genes. Therefore, the transcriptional space of a gene very often invades the space of a neighbouring gene, creating large regions of overlapping transcription. The biological significance of these findings was initially regarded with scepticism. However, mounting evidence suggests that overlapping transcription between neighbouring genes conforms to regulatory purposes and provides new strategies for coordinating bacterial gene expression. In this MicroReview, considering the discoveries made in a pioneering transcriptome analysis performed on Listeria monocytogenes as a starting point, we discuss the progress in understanding the biological meaning of overlapping transcription that has given rise to the excludon concept. We also discuss new conditional transcriptional termination events that create antisense RNAs depending on the metabolite concentrations and new genomic arrangements, known as noncontiguous operons, which contain an interspersed gene that is transcribed in the opposite direction to the rest of the operon.