Insights into the Co-Evolution of Ribosomal Protein S15 with its Regulatory RNAs

Abstract

Ribosomes play a vital role in all cellular life translating the genetic code into functional proteins. This pivotal function is derived from its structure. The large and small subunits of the ribosome consist of 3 ribosomal RNA strands and over 50 individual ribosomal proteins that come together in a highly coordinated manner. There are striking differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic ribosomes and many of the most potent antibacterial drugs target bacterial ribosomes (e.g. tetracycline and kanamycin). Bacteria spend a large amount of energy and nutrients on the production and maintenance of these molecular machines: during exponential growth as much as 40% of dry bacterial mass is ribosomes (Harvey 1970). Because of this, bacteria have evolved an elegant negative feedback mechanism for the regulation of their ribosomal proteins, known as autoregulation. When excess ribosomal protein is produced, unneeded for ribosome assembly, the protein binds a structured portion of its own mRNA transcript to prevent further expression of that operon. Autoregulation facilitates a quick response to changing environmental conditions and ensures economical use of nutrients. My thesis has investigated the autoregulatory function of ribosomal protein S15 in diverse bacterial phyla. In many bacterial species, when there is excess S15 the protein interacts with an RNA structure formed in the 5’-UTR of its own mRNA transcript that enables autoregulation of the S15-encoding operon, rpsO. For many ribosomal proteins (ex. L1, L20, S2) there is striking homology and often mimicry between the recognition motifs within the rRNA and the regulatory mRNA structure. However, this is not the case for S15-three different regulatory RNA structures have been previously described in E. coli, G. stearothermophilus, and T. thermophilus (Portier 1990, Scott 2001, Serganov 2003). These RNAs share little to no structural homology to one another, nor the rRNA, and they are narrowly distributed to their respective bacterial phyla, Gammaproteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Thermales. It is unknown which regulatory RNA structures control the expression of S15 outside of these phyla. Additionally, previous work has shown the S15 homolog from G. stearothermophilus is unable to regulate expression using the mRNA from E. coli. These observations formulate the crux of the question this thesis work endeavors to answer: What drove the evolution of such diverse regulatory RNA structures in these different bacteria? In Chapter II, “Discover and Validate Novel Regulatory Structures for Ribosomal Protein S15in Diverse Bacterial Phyla”, I present evidence for the in silico identification of three novel regulatory RNA structures for S15 and present experimental evidence that one of these novel structures is distinct from those previously described. In Chapter III, “Co-evolution of Ribosomal Protein S15 with Diverse Regulatory RNA Structures”, I present evidence that the amino acid differences in S15 homologs contribute to differences in mRNA binding profiles, and likely lead to the development of the structurally diverse array of the regulatory RNAs we observe in diverse bacterial phyla. In Chapter IV, “Synthetic cis-regulatory RNAs for Ribosomal Protein S15”, I investigate the derivation of novel cis-regulatory RNAs for S15 and find novel structures are readily-derived, yet interact with the rRNA-binding face of S15. Together the work presented in this thesis advances our understanding of the co-evolution between ribosomal protein S15 and its regulatory RNAs in diverse bacterial phyla.