Small Size, Big Impact: Bacterial Functional Nucleic Acids and Their Applications

Genome mining efforts carried out across diverse bacterial genomes over the past two decades have paid off handsomely, leading to the discovery of a plethora of regulatory RNAs. These RNAs include riboswitches—a class of ligand responsive gene regulating elements—and small RNAs (sRNA)—short RNA or protein targeting sequences. Together, this ensemble of RNAs orchestrates and fine-tunes metabolic, stress response, and virulence pathways. These …