Return to search

Processed small RNAs in Archaea and BHB elements

Bulge-helix-bulge (BHB) elements guide the enzymatic splicing machinery that in Archaea excises introns from tRNAs, rRNAs from their primary precursor, and accounts for the assembly of piece-wise encoded tRNAs. This processing pathway renders the intronic sequences as circularized RNA species. Although archaeal transcriptomes harbor a large number of circular small RNAs, it remains unknown whether most or all of them are produced through BHB-dependent splicing. We therefore conduct a genome-wide survey of BHB elements of a phylogenetically diverse set of archaeal species and complement this approach by searching for BHB-like structures in the vicinity of circularized transcripts. We find that besides tRNA introns, the majority of box C/D snoRNAs is associated with BHB elements. Not all circularized sRNAs, however, can be explained by BHB elements, suggesting that there is at least one other mechanism of RNA circularization at work in Archaea. Pattern search methods were unable, however, to identify common sequence and/or secondary structure features that could be characteristic for such a mechanism.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:15-qucosa-185322
Date27 October 2015
CreatorsBerkemer, Sarah J., Höner zu Siederdissen, Christian, Amman, Fabian, Wintsche, Axel, Will, Sebastian, Hofacker, Ivo L., Prohaska, Sonja J., Stadler, Peter F.
ContributorsUniversität Leipzig, Bioinformatik, Universität Wien, Institut für Theoretische Chemie, Universität Leipzig, Computational EvoDevo, Universität Leipzig, Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Bioinformatik (IZBI), Universität Wien, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, University of Copenhagen, Center for non-coding RNA in Technology and Health, Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik,, Fraunhofer-Institut für Zelltherapie und Immunologie IZI,, Santa Fe Institute,, Kernel Press UG,
PublisherUniversitätsbibliothek Leipzig
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:article
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceGenomics and computational biology Vol. 1, No. 1 (2015): e18

Page generated in 0.0024 seconds