Quest for riboswitches in eukaryotes and identification of orphan riboswitch ligands

• Applicant: Dr. Christina E. Weinberg
• Subject Area: Biochemistry
• Term: from 2013 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 239225825

Riboswitches are RNA elements mostly found in the 5' untranslated region (UTR) of bacterial mRNA and consist of a metabolite-binding aptamer domain and an expression platform. They regulate essential metabolic pathways and enable adaptation to environmental changes, most commonly byinhibiting transcription or translation initiation.A decade of riboswitch research has given us insight into their structural diversity, vast phylogenetic distribution and their complex regulatory mechanisms. Now riboswitches are explored as target for antibacterial research or used as model for the design of artificial ligand-responsive regulatory devices.Nevertheless, newly sequenced genomes spur the discovery of novel riboswitch sequences and even though over 20 riboswitch classes have been defined to date, some remain whose ligand is not known. This proposal presents a research plan for identifying orphan riboswitch ligands and discusses possibleendeavors for searching riboswitches in eukaryotic organellar DNA sequences.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Ronald R. Breaker