Abstract
RtcB, a highly conserved RNA ligase, is found in all three domains of life, and demonstrated to be an essential tRNA splicing component in archaea and metazoans. However, the biological functions of RtcB in bacteria, where there is no splicing, remains to be clarified. We first performed bioinformatics analysis which revealed highly conserved structures and presumably conserved functions of RtcB in bacteria. However, its orthologs only occur in ∼ 0.5% of bacterial species across diverse phyla with significant signals of frequent horizontal transfer, highlighting its non-essential role in bacteria. Next, by constructing an rtcB-knockout strain, we find that the removal of antibiotic stress induces a significant impact on rtcB expression in wild-type strain, and furthermore the depletion of RtcB (ARtcB strain) delays the recovery process. Our transcriptomic analysis, comprising the 3′-end labeling of RNAs, highlights a significant increase in unmapped reads and cleaved rRNAs in the Δ RtcB strain, particularly during recovery. Our observations suggest that the conserved RNA ligase RtcB, repairs damaged rRNAs following stress, which potentially saves energy and accelerates recovery of its host. We propose that acquisition of RtcB by diverse bacterial taxa provides a competitive advantage under stressful conditions.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0903800), the National Scientific Foundation of China (31470180, 31471237, 31671350), the Programs of Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Project (Z171100001317011), the Scientific Research Project of Public Welfare Industry (2013FY114300, 201402018), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QYZDY-SSW-SMC017), and the CAS-TWAS President’s Fellowship.
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Manwar, M.R., Shao, C., Shi, X. et al. The bacterial RNA ligase RtcB accelerates the repair process of fragmented rRNA upon releasing the antibiotic stress. Sci. China Life Sci. 63, 251–258 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-018-9405-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-018-9405-y