The γ-proteobacterial rimP leader is a putative attenuator element identified by

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 combi ...

within bacteria of the γ-proteobacterial phylum. It is located upstream of the ''rimP-nusA-infB''

operon In genetics, an operon is a functioning unit of DNA containing a cluster of genes under the control of a single promoter. The genes are transcribed together into an mRNA strand and either translated together in the cytoplasm, or undergo splic ...

encoding RimP, a protein shown to be involved in the 30S ribosomal subunit maturation, NusA, a transcriptional factor controlling termination, and the translation

initiation factor Initiation factors are proteins that bind to the small subunit of the ribosome during the initiation of translation, a part of protein biosynthesis. Initiation factors can interact with repressors to slow down or prevent translation. They have the ...

IF-2 respectively. The rimP-leader presents a Rho-independent terminator at the 3' end, corresponding to a highly conserved GGGc(...)gCCC motif. This motif is presumed to operate as a non-coding leader. Its mechanism remains unknown, but it is tempting to speculate a regulatory involvement of the NusA protein, which expression has been shown to lower the operon expression, and which is already involved in the attenuation of the Trp, His and S10 operons.

References

External links

*{{Rfam, id=RF01770, name=Gammaproteobacteria rimP leader Cis-regulatory RNA elements