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Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Exploring Sequence Space to Identify Binding Sites for Regulatory RNA-Binding Proteins
Published on: August 9, 2019
Regulating the regulator: an RNA decoy acts as an OFF switch for the regulation of an sRNA
Pierre Mandin1, Susan Gottesman
1Laboratory of Molecular Biology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.
Abstract:
Many bacterial small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) pair with mRNA targets, stimulating or inhibiting mRNA stability and/or translation. Regulation of these sRNAs is usually due to tight transcriptional regulation of synthesis.In this issue of Genes & Development and a related paper in Molecular Microbiology, Figueroa-Bossi and colleagues (pp. 2004-2015) and Overgaard and colleagues report a novel regulatory mechanism in which induction of a competing mRNA acts to titrate away the sRNA, allowing expression of an otherwise strongly inhibited target gene.
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