Determination of the Affinity of Eukaryotic DDX3 RNA Helicase to the Characteristic Elements of mRNA Secondary Structure.

DDX3 RNA helicase is involved in many processes of RNA metabolism in eukaryotic cells. Many studies of DDX3 have shown that it is also involved in the translation initiation process, both cap-dependent and IRES-dependent. However, the specificity of the secondary structure of mRNA 5'-UTRs, which require DDX3 RNA helicase for effective translation, has not yet been determined. We performed a bioinformatic analysis of the 5'-UTR secondary structures in the pool of DDX3-dependent mRNAs in silico and predicted that the length of 5'-UTRs for such mRNAs is less than the average for the genome and that there are also characteristic hairpin structures in the region of the first 50 nucleotides from the 5'-end of the mRNA.

The σ24 Subunit of Escherichia coli RNA Polymerase Can Induce Transcriptional Pausing in vitro.

The bacterium Escherichia coli has seven σ subunits that bind core RNA polymerase and are necessary for promoter recognition. It was previously shown that the σ70 and σ38 subunits can also interact with the transcription elongation complex (TEC) and stimulate pausing by recognizing DNA sequences similar to the -10 element of promoters. In this study, we analyzed the ability of the σ32, σ28, and σ24 subunits to induce pauses in reconstituted TECs containing corresponding -10 consensus elements. It was found that the σ24 subunit can induce a transcriptional pause depending on the presence of the -10 element. Pause formation is suppressed by the Gre factors, suggesting that the paused complex adopts a backtracked conformation. Some natural promoters contain potential signals of σ24-dependent pauses in the initially transcribed regions, suggesting that such pauses may have regulatory functions in transcription.