Development of a novel tobramycin dependent riboswitch

Abstract

We herein report the selection and characterization of a new riboswitch dependent on the aminoglycoside tobramycin. Its dynamic range rivals even the tetracycline dependent riboswitch to be the current best performing, synthetic riboswitch that controls translation initiation. The riboswitch was selected with RNA Capture-SELEX, a method that not only selects for binding but also for structural changes in aptamers on binding. This study demonstrates how this method can fundamentally reduce the labour required for the de novo identification of synthetic riboswitches. The initially selected riboswitch candidate harbours two distinct tobramycin binding sites with KDs of 1.1 nM and 2.4 μM, respectively, and can distinguish between tobramycin and the closely related compounds kanamycin A and B. Using detailed genetic and biochemical analyses and 1H NMR spectroscopy, the proposed secondary structure of the riboswitch was verified and the tobramycin binding sites were characterized. The two binding sites were found to be essentially non-overlapping, allowing for a separate investigation of their contribution to the activity of the riboswitch. We thereby found that only the high-affinity binding site was responsible for regulatory activity, which allowed us to engineer a riboswitch from only this site with a minimal sequence size of 33 nt and outstanding performance.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Oct 04, 2023
Source ID
10.1093/nar/gkad767

Entities

People

  • Adrien Boussebayle
  • Beatrix Suess
  • Cristina Bofill-bosch
  • Daniel Kelvin
  • Elke Duchardt-Ferner
  • Eric Bräuchle
  • Hans Marx
  • Jens Wöhnert
  • Leon Kraus
  • Lisa-marie Maurer
  • Simon Fürbacher

Organizations

  • Aarhus University
  • German Research Foundation
  • Office of Naval Research
  • Technical University of Darmstadt

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Biology
  • Computer science

Readers

  • Economics
  • Molecular Genetics

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology