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ssNA-helicase RNA motif

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
ssNA-helicase
Consensus secondary structure and sequence conservation of ssNA-helicase RNA
Identifiers
SymbolssNA-helicase
RfamRF03070
Other data
RNA typeGene; sRNA
SOSO:0001263
PDB structuresPDBe


The ssNA-helicase RNA motif is a conserved RNA structure that was discovered by bioinformatics.[1] Although the ssNA-helicase motif was published as an RNA candidate, there is some reason to suspect that it might function as a single-stranded DNA. In terms of secondary structure, RNA and DNA are difficult to distinguish when only sequence information is available.

ssNA-helicase motif RNAs are found in Bacillota and Actinomycetota. The ssNA-helicase motif occurs upstream of genes that likely function as helicases, possible on an RNA substrate. Some evidence suggests that these genes are part of single-stranded RNA viruses (or presumably phages, as the RNAs are located in bacterial sequences). However, there is also a suggestion of an association with singled-stranded DNA viruses that infect plants. This latter potential association could mean that the ssNA-helicase motif actually functions as singled-stranded DNA. If the RNA is indeed part of a phage, then its location upstream of a protein-coding gene might just reflect the typical gene organization of phages, and not a direct functional or regulatory association between the RNA and the downstream gene. Therefore, it is ambiguous whether ssNA-helicase motif examples function as cis-regulatory elements or whether they operate in trans, and also whether they function as RNA or DNA.

References

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  1. ^ Weinberg Z, Lünse CE, Corbino KA, Ames TD, Nelson JW, Roth A, Perkins KR, Sherlock ME, Breaker RR (October 2017). "Detection of 224 candidate structured RNAs by comparative analysis of specific subsets of intergenic regions". Nucleic Acids Res. 45 (18): 10811–10823. doi:10.1093/nar/gkx699. PMC 5737381. PMID 28977401.