Riboregulator Feature Page

Figure 1. Artificial riboregulator system used to control post-transcriptional regulation (Isaacs et al.,2004).

Regulatory RNAs are small RNA that regulates biological processes such as transcription or translation. The use of regulatory RNAs has been a great interest in the field of synthetic biology because it provides an additional level of regulation for biological circuits and systems. Regulatory RNAs have also used by many iGEM teams. We have identified 7 teams that have used cis-repressing (CR) and trans-activating (TA) riboregulator system and more teams that have used riboswitches. For example, Isaacs 2005, UC Berkeley 2006 and Caltech 2007 contributed many CR and TA devices to the Registry.

Artificial cis-repressing and trans-activating riboregulator system was introduced to the iGEM community by Isaacs in 2005. The riboregulator system as a whole acts to regulate translation at the RNA level. One component of the system ,crRNA, which contains a cis-repressing sequence 5' of the RBS, RBS, and gene of interest. The cis-repressing sequence can form a loop form complementary base pairs with the RBS to prevent the recognition of RBS by ribosomes. The translation crRNA is also commonly described as a "lock" because it "locks" the RBS and prevent translation. The "key" to this system is the taRNA. taRNA can interact (in trans) with the cis-repressing sequence to unlock the RBS and therefore to activate translation (Figure 1.).

The benefits of this system, as described in Isaacs et al.&#39 s paper, are leakage minimization, fast response time, tunability, independent regulation of multiple genes etc¹.