Bacterial dual-function small RNAs regulate gene expression by RNA-RNA base pairing and also code for small proteins. SgrS is a dual-function small RNA in Escherichia coli and Salmonella that is expressed under stress conditions associated with accumulation of sugar-phosphates, and its activity is crucial for growth during stress. The base-pairing function of SgrS regulates a number of mRNA targets, resulting in reduced uptake and enhanced efflux of sugars. SgrS also encodes the SgrT protein, which reduces sugar uptake by a mechanism that is independent of base pairing. While SgrS base-pairing activity has been characterized in detail, little is known about how base pairing and translation of sgrT are coordinated. In the current study, we utilized a series of mutants to determine how translation of sgrT affected the efficiency of base pairing-dependent regulation and vice versa. Mutations that abrogated sgrT translation had minimal effects on base-pairing activity. Conversely, mutations that impaired base-pairing interactions resulted in increased SgrT production. Furthermore, while ectopic overexpression of sgrS mutant alleles lacking only one of the two functions rescued cell growth under stress conditions, the SgrS base-pairing function alone was indispensable for growth rescue when alleles were expressed from the native locus. Collectively, the results suggest that during stress, repression of sugar transporter synthesis via base pairing with sugar transporter mRNAs is the first priority of SgrS. Subsequently, SgrT is made and acts on preexisting transporters. The combined action of these two functions produces an effective stress response.
In the past decade, a vast number of small RNAs (sRNAs) have been identified as important posttranscriptional regulators. In bacteria, sRNAs typically do not encode proteins. Rather, they regulate gene expression by binding to target mRNAs via basepairing interactions, resulting in enhanced (positive regulation) or reduced (negative regulation) translation. With the identification of new sRNAs, it is increasingly clear that some sRNAs, dubbed dual-function sRNAs, not only act as canonical sRNAs by regulating targets via a base-pairing mechanism but also encode regulatory proteins (1). While the noncoding, base-pairing sRNA mechanisms have been studied extensively (reviewed in references 2 and 3), much remains to be learned about the dual-function sRNA regulators. For example, the molecular functions of the proteins encoded by bifunctional sRNAs and the roles of these small proteins in cellular physiology are not well understood. Moreover, the interplay between translation and base-pairing activity has not been characterized for any dual-function sRNA. In this study, we use a dual-function sRNA from Escherichia coli and Salmonella as a model for understanding how a single RNA can serve two mechanistically distinct purposes.SgrS is a bifunctional sRNA expressed during a specific metabolic stress condition called glucose-phosphate stress (4-6). This stress causes growth inhi...