Anti-Q RNA

Anti-Q RNA (formerly Qa RNA) is a small ncRNA from the conjugal plasmid pCF10 of Enterococcus faecalis. It is coded in cis to its regulatory target, prgQ, but can also act in trans. Anti-Q is known to interact with nascent prgQ transcripts to allow formation of an intrinsic terminator, or attenuator, thus preventing transcription of downstream genes.^[1][2] This mode of regulation is essentially the same as that of the countertranscript-driven attenuators that control copy number in pT181,^[3] pAMbeta1^[4] and pIP501^[5] and related Staphylococcal plasmids.

Anti-Q RNA
Predicted secondary structure and sequence conservation of Anti-Q RNA
Identifiers
Symbol	Anti-Q_RNA
Alt. Symbols	QaRNA
Rfam	RF00388
Other data
RNA type	Gene; antisense
Domain(s)	Bacteria
SO	SO:0000644
PDB structures	PDBe

Anti-Q is transcribed from the same segment of DNA as prgQ, except from the opposite strand, making it perfectly complementary to a portion of prgQ. Further experiments have experimentally confirmed the original consensus secondary structure and demonstrated that only certain regions of Anti-Q interact with prgQ.^[6]

Anti-Q is derived from the 5’ end a longer transcript. The 3’ end of this transcript encodes PrgX, a repressor of prgQ transcription.