Bacterial small RNA
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Bacterial small RNAs are small RNAs produced by bacteria; they are 50- to 500-nucleotide non-coding RNA molecules, highly structured and containing several stem-loops.[1][2] Numerous sRNAs have been identified using both computational analysis and laboratory-based techniques such as Northern blotting, microarrays and RNA-Seq[3] in a number of bacterial species including Escherichia coli,[4][5][6] the model pathogen Salmonella,[7] the nitrogen-fixing alphaproteobacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti,[8] marine cyanobacteria,[9] Francisella tularensis (the causative agent of tularaemia),[10] Streptococcus pyogenes[11], the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus[12], and the plant pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pathovar oryzae.[13] Bacterial sRNAs affect how genes are expressed within bacterial cells via interaction with mRNA or protein, and thus can affect a variety of bacterial functions like metabolism, virulence, environmental stress response, and structure.[7][12]