Professor Ben Luisi, Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge
Wednesday 4th February, 4.00 p.m., Stacey Lecture Theatre 1
Small regulatory RNAs enrich the network complexity of post-transcriptional gene control in prokaryotes. In bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Salmonella sp., the action of many small RNAs in silencing transcripts involves the endoribonuclease RNase E. The enzyme serves as the scaffold of a multi-protein assembly, known as the RNA degradosome, which plays a central role in many cellular RNA turnover and processing events. We describe the organisation and cellular localisation of the degradosome. and we present a model for how some sRNAs act in conjunction with the RNA chaperone Hfq to guide the ribonuclease to cleave targeted transcripts.