Final Report Summary - POSTTRANS (An interdisciplinary genome-wide study of posttranscriptional regulation by small RNAs: from individual interactions to networks and evolution)
Additional important players in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression are endoribonucleases, which are enzymes that cleave RNA and play important roles in the processing and/or degradation of RNA transcripts. A major goal is to identify their cleavage targets and cleavage specificities. In the current study we focused on bacterial RNase III, an endoribonuclease that is known to cleave double stranded RNA, however the full scope of its targets is yet to be found. We applied to E. coli cells a tailored RNA-seq-based technology together with state of the art computational analysis, which have allowed transcriptome-wide in-vivo mapping of RNase III cleavage sites at a nucleotide resolution. We generated a comprehensive map of the cleavage sites in both intra-molecular and inter-molecular duplex substrates, providing novel insights into its in-vivo cleavage rules and setting the framework for the study of interweaved sRNA and RNase III post-transcriptional regulation.