1. Small RNA and Cyanobacteria

2. Characteristics of Cyanobacteria
Aquatic
Photosynthetic
Usually unicellular

3. Importance of Cyanobacteria
Atmosphere
Chloroplast

4. Encoded in the intergenic regions
What is sRNA?
Encoded in the intergenic regions

5. Why do we want to learn about sRNAs?
To predict them in any genome of an organism
To experimentally analyze their function
To control gene expression

6. Why have few sRNAs been found?
Very small (usually nt)
Less sensitive to point mutations
Function at the 2º structure level
Do not encode protein sequence
No coding signals (start/stop codon)

7. How Biolingua can search for sRNAs in cyanobacteria?
Compare the sequences of intergenic regions by BLAST
These results will include both an e-value and a percent identical score
Run the similar sequences from multiple organisms thru RNAz, which predicts if an RNA exists by its 2º structure

8. To further verify an sRNA…
M-Fold: takes a potential RNA sequence and incorporates its structure
Experiments: test by northern blot analysis

9. Jeff Elhai and Dr. You Chen
Acknowledgements:
Jeff Elhai and
Dr. You Chen