Highlights d An inducible CRISPRi system identifies rate-limiting enzymes d E. coli metabolism is robust against CRISPRi-knockdowns of enzymes d CRISPRi enforces specific metabolome and proteome responses d Regulatory metabolites buffer CRISPRi-knockdowns
Antisense RNAs (asRNAs) are present in diverse organisms and play important roles in gene regulation. In this work, we mapped the primary antisense transcriptome in the halophilic archaeon Halobacterium salinarum NRC-1. By reanalyzing publicly available data, we mapped antisense transcription start sites (aTSSs) and inferred the probable 3′ ends of these transcripts. We analyzed the resulting asRNAs according to the size, location, function of genes on the opposite strand, expression levels and conservation. We show that at least 21% of the genes contain asRNAs in H. salinarum. Most of these asRNAs are expressed at low levels. They are located antisense to genes related to distinctive characteristics of H. salinarum, such as bacteriorhodopsin, gas vesicles, transposases and other important biological processes such as translation. We provide evidence to support asRNAs in type II toxin–antitoxin systems in archaea. We also analyzed public Ribosome profiling (Ribo-seq) data and found that ~10% of the asRNAs are ribosome-associated non-coding RNAs (rancRNAs), with asRNAs from transposases overrepresented. Using a comparative transcriptomics approach, we found that ~19% of the asRNAs annotated in H. salinarum belong to genes with an ortholog in Haloferax volcanii, in which an aTSS could be identified with positional equivalence. This shows that most asRNAs are not conserved between these halophilic archaea.
The existence of sense overlapping transcripts that share regulatory and coding information in the same genomic sequence shows an additional level of prokaryotic gene expression complexity. Here we report the discovery of ncRNAs associated with IS1341-type transposase (tnpB) genes, at the 3'-end of such elements, with examples in archaea and bacteria. Focusing on the model haloarchaeon Halobacterium salinarum NRC-1, we show the existence of sense overlapping transcripts (sotRNAs) for all its IS1341-type transposases. Publicly available transcriptome compendium show condition-dependent differential regulation between sotRNAs and their cognate genes. These sotRNAs allowed us to find a UUCA tetraloop motif that is present in other archaea (ncRNA family HgcC) and in a H. salinarum intergenic ncRNA derived from a palindrome associated transposable elements (PATE). Overexpression of one sotRNA and the PATE-derived RNA harboring the tetraloop motif improved H. salinarum growth, indicating that these ncRNAs are functional.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.