About this item:

67 Views | 22 Downloads

Author Notes:

Deepak Anand, deepak.anad@biol.lu.se

PA, DA, DS, RN, and KJ conceived and designed the experiments. DA, DS, RN, and KJ performed experiments. PA, DA, DS, RN, KJ, and NM analysed the data and contributed reagents, materials, and analysis tools. PA, DA, DS, and RN wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors thank Raphael Valdivia for pFPV27 vector and William Margolin for pBAD33/ftsZ-yfp. The authors acknowledge technical help from H. S. Rajeswari in immunostaining and western blotting and José Vicente Gomes for RNA-Seq data analysis.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Subjects:

Research Funding:

This work was supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (grant number BT-PR7695-AGR-36-737-2013 to PA).

Keywords:

  • Escherichia coli
  • StfZ cis-antisense RNA
  • ftsZ mRNA
  • FtsZ level
  • cell division

Complete identity and expression of StfZ, the cis-antisense RNA to the mRNA of the cell division gene ftsZ, in Escherichia coli

Journal Title:

Frontiers in Microbiology

Volume:

Volume 13

Publisher:

Type of Work:

Article | Final Publisher PDF

Abstract:

Bacteria regulate FtsZ protein levels through transcriptional and translational mechanisms for proper cell division. A cis-antisense RNA, StfZ, produced from the ftsA-ftsZ intergenic region, was proposed to regulate FtsZ level in Escherichia coli. However, its structural identity remained unknown. In this study, we determined the complete sequence of StfZ and identified the isoforms and its promoters. We find that under native physiological conditions, StfZ is expressed at a 1:6 ratio of StfZ:ftsZ mRNA at all growth phases from three promoters as three isoforms of 366, 474, and 552 nt RNAs. Overexpression of StfZ reduces FtsZ protein level, increases cell length, and blocks cell division without affecting the ftsZ mRNA stability. We did not find differential expression of StfZ under the stress conditions of heat shock, cold shock, or oxidative stress, or at any growth phase. These data indicated that the cis-encoded StfZ antisense RNA to ftsZ mRNA may be involved in the fine tuning of ftsZ mRNA levels available for translation as per the growth-phase-specific requirement at all phases of growth and cell division.

Copyright information:

© 2022 Anand, Jakkala, Nair, Sharan, Pradhan, Mukkayyan and Ajitkumar.

This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Export to EndNote