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Riboswitches as Sensor Entities

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Handbook of Cell Biosensors

Abstract

Riboswitches are regulatory noncoding RNAs, predominantly located in the 5′ untranslated region of mRNA, that can serve as molecular switches able to regulate the level of gene expression. This occurs through the conformational changes caused by binding to a specific metabolite. Riboswitches contain two structural domains: an aptamer domain that senses and binds to a metabolite and an expression platform that undergoes a conformational change in response to aptamer-ligand binding resulting in regulation of expression of downstream gene. In addition to natural riboswitches found in living organisms, a variety of synthetic riboswitches that respond to nonnatural small molecules have been developed. Synthetic riboswitches can be engineered to regulate expression of any gene in response to any nonnatural molecule that is capable of being bound by RNA and is not toxic to cells. This feature demonstrates a strong possibility for RNA switches to serve as sensor entities for design and development of cell-based biosensors with a variety of different applications. This chapter gives an overview of riboswitch selection techniques, describes reporter systems for monitoring riboswitch activation and approaches for riboswitch tuning and performance optimization in order to fulfill biosensor requirements, and discusses riboswitch applications as sensor entities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 711th Human Performance Wing, Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, OH, USA

    Svetlana Harbaugh, Michael Goodson, Jorge Chávez & Nancy Kelley-Loughnane

  2. Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Dayton, OH, USA

    Yaroslav Chushak

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  1. Svetlana Harbaugh
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  2. Michael Goodson
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  3. Yaroslav Chushak
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  4. Jorge Chávez
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  5. Nancy Kelley-Loughnane
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Correspondence to Svetlana Harbaugh .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UMR CNRS 6144 GEPEA, Université de Nantes, La Roche sur Yon, France

    Gerald Thouand

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  1. Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Shimshon Belkin

  2. Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, UK

    Paul Freemont

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Harbaugh, S., Goodson, M., Chushak, Y., Chávez, J., Kelley-Loughnane, N. (2019). Riboswitches as Sensor Entities. In: Thouand, G. (eds) Handbook of Cell Biosensors. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47405-2_121-1

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