The IMES-2 RNA motif is a conserved

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA) are nucleic acids. Along with lipids, proteins, and carbohydra ...

structure that was identified by a study based on

metagenomics Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental or clinical samples by a method called sequencing. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics, community genomics or micr ...

and

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combin ...

, and the underlying RNA sequences were identified independently by a similar earlier study. These RNAs are present in environmental sequences, and when discovered were not known to be present in any cultivated

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

. However, an IMES-2 RNA has been detected in

alphaproteobacterium Alphaproteobacteria is a class of bacteria in the phylum Pseudomonadota (formerly Proteobacteria). The Magnetococcales and Mariprofundales are considered basal or sister to the Alphaproteobacteria. The Alphaproteobacteria are highly diverse and p ...

HIMB114, which is classified in the

SAR11 clade The Pelagibacterales are an order in the Alphaproteobacteria composed of free-living marine bacteria that make up roughly one in three cells at the ocean's surface. Overall, members of the ''Pelagibacterales'' are estimated to make up between a ...

marine bacteria Marine prokaryotes are marine bacteria and marine archaea. They are defined by their habitat as prokaryotes that live in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. All cellula ...

. This finding fits with earlier predictions that species that use IMES-2 RNAs are most closely related to

alphaproteobacteria Alphaproteobacteria is a class of bacteria in the phylum Pseudomonadota (formerly Proteobacteria). The Magnetococcales and Mariprofundales are considered basal or sister to the Alphaproteobacteria. The Alphaproteobacteria are highly diverse and ...

. IMES-2 RNAs are exceptionally abundant, as twice as many IMES-2 RNAs were found as ribosomes in RNAs sampled from the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

. Only two bacterial RNAs are known (

6S RNA In the field of molecular biology the 6S RNA is a non-coding RNA that was one of the first to be identified and sequenced. What it does in the bacterial cell was unknown until recently. In the early 2000s scientists found out the function of 6S ...

and

transfer RNA Transfer RNA (abbreviated tRNA and formerly referred to as sRNA, for soluble RNA) is an adaptor molecule composed of RNA, typically 76 to 90 nucleotides in length (in eukaryotes), that serves as the physical link between the mRNA and the amino a ...

) to be more highly transcribed than ribosomes. The IMES-2 RNA secondary structure contains four

stem-loop Stem-loop intramolecular base pairing is a pattern that can occur in single-stranded RNA. The structure is also known as a hairpin or hairpin loop. It occurs when two regions of the same strand, usually complementary in nucleotide sequence wh ...

structures and one

pseudoknot __NOTOC__ A pseudoknot is a nucleic acid secondary structure containing at least two stem-loop structures in which half of one stem is intercalated between the two halves of another stem. The pseudoknot was first recognized in the turnip yellow ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Imes-2 Rna Motif Non-coding RNA