Antisense regulation of Opa expression in Neisseria gonorrhoeae

淋病奈瑟菌 Opa 表达的反义调控

• 批准号: 316545904
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Thomas Rudel
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Mikrobiologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-31 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/316545904?language=en
• 关键词: Antisense; regulation; Opa; expression; Neisseria

The sexually transmitted human pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae encodes a family of eleven outer membrane proteins named Opa which contribute to the adhesion to and invasion into host cells. Opa expression is subject to phase variation due to the presence of pentameric sequence repeats at the 5-end of the respective genes resulting in gonococcal populations whose members express different combinations of Opa proteins or no Opa proteins at all. Opa proteins are believed to play an important role in pathogenesis since isolates from human infection are predominantly Opa-positive. A recent transcriptome analysis of N. gonorrhoeae via RNA sequencing revealed massive antisense transcription from the opa gene loci. Based on the previous observation that full-length transcripts from out-of-frame opa genes are barely detectable in the cell we hypothesize that opa antisense transcription is limiting the wasteful accumulation and expression of out-of-frame opa mRNAs. In the present proposal we address the role of opa antisense RNAs in opa expression control and investigate the underlying regulatory mechanisms.

性传播的人类病原体淋病奈瑟菌编码一个由 11 种外膜蛋白组成的家族，名为 Opa，有助于粘附和侵入宿主细胞。由于各基因 5 端存在五聚序列重复，Opa 表达会发生相位变化，导致淋球菌群体的成员表达不同的 Opa 蛋白组合或根本不表达 Opa 蛋白。 Opa 蛋白被认为在发病机制中发挥着重要作用，因为人类感染的分离株主要呈 Opa 阳性。最近通过 RNA 测序对淋病奈瑟菌进行的转录组分析揭示了 opa 基因位点的大量反义转录。基于之前的观察，来自框架外 opa 基因的全长转录本在细胞中几乎检测不到，我们假设 opa 反义转录限制了框架外 opa mRNA 的浪费积累和表达。在本提案中，我们探讨了 opa 反义 RNA 在 opa 表达控制中的作用，并研究了潜在的调节机制。