Short Communication - Journal of RNA and Genomics (2020) Volume 16, Issue 1

The Human Gut Microbiome In-silico Methods Of Lysene And Purine Roboswitches.

The human gut microbiome represents colonization of microbes in the human alimentary canal playing a vital role in human physiology, metabolism and immune response. These microbes show commensalism with human cells and do not allow the pathogenic microbes to settle and disrupt the normal functioning of the human gut. Thus major changes in normal gut microbiome colonization might cause diseased condition. The riboswitches control gene expression of these microbes as well as the pathogenic microbes and may act as potent drug targets. The chemical analogues of the riboswitches? natural ligand may bind to them and alter their activity causing dysfunctioning of normal cellular functions hence disrupting the normal colonization of the human gut. Therefore, we aim to study the distribution of various riboswitches, the genes regulated by them and their potential as RNA drug target. In this study, we identified 545 candidate riboswitches in 59 bacterial and 4 archaeal genomes of adult human gut. This study also revealed that the most abundant riboswitch is the TPP riboswitch (25%) followed by Cobalmin (17%), FMN (11%) and Lysine riboswitch (8%). The lower abundance was shown by YkkC/yxkD leader (2%), Cyclic di-GMP II (1%) and ZMP/ZTP riboswitch (1%); the rare ones included M. Florum (0.4%), Nico (0.2%), AdoCbl variant (0.2%) and SAM-I/IV variant riboswitch (0.2%). Further, we found the genes regulated by these riboswitches and predicted seven riboswitches such as c-di-GMP I, c-di-GMP II, SAM, glmS, THF, YdaO/YuaA leader, and glycine riboswitches that might act as drug targets in the pathogenic bacteria of the human gut. These riboswitches play important role in vital synthetic/metabolic pathways and are sparsely present in other non-pathogenic major microflora of the gut.

Author(s): Padmini Priyadarshini TR

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