Investigating the Cleavage Specificity of Mycobacterium smegmatis RNase E in vitro

Davis, Alexa B.; Dainis, Joseph P.

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Investigating the Cleavage Specificity of Mycobacterium smegmatis RNase E in vitro Public

Tuberculosis is a bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis that primarily affects the lungs. The success of M. tuberculosis as a pathogen relies on tight regulation of gene expression related to growth, metabolism, and survival. One strategy the bacterium employs to achieve this is decreasing the rate of mRNA degradation, a process believed to be regulated by RNase E, the major catalytic and scaffolding element of the degradosome. Though thoroughly studied in E. coli, RNase E in M. tuberculosis remains relatively unexplored. In this research, we investigated the cleavage specificity of RNase E using three engineered variants of the enzyme, and collected evidence to suggest that cleavage sites mapped in vivo for the M. smegmatis rne 5’ UTR may be attributed to RNase E activity

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