Small regulatory RNAs in Campylobacter jejuni: The global view

An unexpected and exciting finding of the post-genomic era has been the emerging idea that non-coding RNAs play an important role in all domains of life. Many have been shown to play critical regulatory roles through interactions with other RNAs and proteins, influencing regulation at the post-transcriptional level. In bacteria, high throughput sequencing of transcriptomes (RNA-seq) has aided and expedited the identification of regulatory RNAs. Understanding the fundamental role of regulatory RNAs, however, has been moving at a much slower pace. Although most regulatory RNAs interact with other RNAs to exert their function, the development of high-throughput tools to allow identification of RNA-RNA interactions in bacteria is still lacking.
Campylobacter jejuni is known to be the most common cause of bacterial gastroenteritis in developed countries, with an estimated half a million cases per year in England and Wales. Given the medical and public health importance of a Campylobacter infection, it is remarkable that C. jejuni is one of the least understood enteropathogens. The complexity of its transcriptional landscape as it persists in the chicken gut and infects the human gut still remains to by investigated.
This project aims to build a transcriptomic compendium for C. jejuni, focusing on developing a comprehensive database of sRNAs expressed under various environmental stresses and growth conditions the bacteria may encounter. RNA-RNA interactions will be identified both in silico and through the development of novel methodologies and this would allow us to build a global, in vivo overview of these interactions. We expect the analysis of the data will allow the identification of sRNAs and their targets and thus allow us to formulate conclusions about their function and role.