Small RNAs and Hfq capture unfolded RNA target sites during transcription

Small ribonucleoproteins (sRNPs) target nascent precursor RNAs to guide folding, modification, and splicing during transcription. Yet, rapid co-transcriptional folding of the RNA can mask sRNP sites, impeding target recognition and regulation. To examine how sRNPs target nascent RNAs, we monitored binding of bacterial Hfq⋅DsrA sRNPs to rpoS transcripts using single-molecule co-localization co-transcriptional assembly (smCoCoA). We show that Hfq⋅DsrA recursively samples the mRNA before transcription of the target site to poise it for base pairing with DsrA. We adapted smCoCoA to precisely measure when the target site is synthesized and revealed that Hfq⋅DsrA often binds the mRNA during target site synthesis close to RNA polymerase (RNAP). We suggest that targeting transcripts near RNAP allows an sRNP to capture a site before the transcript folds, providing a kinetic advantage over post-transcriptional targeting. We propose that other sRNPs may also use RNAP-proximal targeting to hasten recognition and regulation.