As the scope and complexity of synthetic biology grows, an understanding of evolution and ecology will be critical to its success.

Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are versatile regulators in cellular networks. While most trans-acting ncRNAs possess well-defined mechanisms that can regulate transcription or translation, they generally lack the ability to directly sense cellular signals. In this work, we describe a set of design principles for fusing ncRNAs to RNA aptamers to engineer allosteric RNA fusion molecules that modulate the activity of ncRNAs in a ligand-inducible way in Escherichia coli. We apply these principles to ncRNA regulators that can regulate translation (IS10 ncRNA) and transcription (pT181 ncRNA), and demonstrate that our design strategy exhibits high modularity between the aptamer ligand-sensing motif and the ncRNA target-recognition motif, which allows us to reconfigure these two motifs to engineer orthogonally acting fusion molecules that respond to different ligands and regulate different targets in the same cell. Finally, we show that the same ncRNA fused with different sensing domains results in a sensory-level NOR gate that integrates multiple input signals to perform genetic logic. These ligand-sensing ncRNA regulators provide useful tools to modulate the activity of structurally related families of ncRNAs, and building upon the growing body of RNA synthetic biology, our ability to design aptamer-ncRNA fusion molecules offers new ways to engineer ligand-sensing regulatory circuits.

In single stranded (+)-sense RNA viruses, RNA structural elements (SEs) play essential roles in the infection process from replication to encapsidation. Using selective 2'-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension sequencing (SHAPE-Seq) and covariation analysis, we explore the structural features of the third genome segment of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), RNA3 (2216 nt), both in vitro and in plant cell lysates. Comparing SHAPE-Seq and covariation analysis results revealed multiple SEs in the coat protein open reading frame and 3' untranslated region. Four of these SEs were mutated and serially passaged in Nicotiana tabacum plants to identify biologically selected changes to the original mutated sequences. After passaging, loop mutants showed partial reversion to their wild-type sequence and SEs that were structurally disrupted by mutations were restored to wild-type-like structures via synonymous mutations in planta. These results support the existence and selection of virus open reading frame SEs in the host organism and provide a framework for further studies on the role of RNA structure in viral infection. Additionally, this work demonstrates the applicability of high-throughput chemical probing in plant cell lysates and presents a new method for calculating SHAPE reactivities from overlapping reverse transcriptase priming sites.

Sequence census methods reduce molecular measurements such as transcript abundance and protein-nucleic acid interactions to counting problems via DNA sequencing. We focus on a novel assay utilizing this approach, called selective 2'-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension sequencing (SHAPE-Seq), that can be used to characterize RNA secondary and tertiary structure. We describe a fully automated data analysis pipeline for SHAPE-Seq analysis that includes read processing, mapping, and structural inference based on a model of the experiment. Our methods rely on the solution of a series of convex optimization problems for which we develop efficient and effective numerical algorithms. Our results can be easily extended to other chemical probes of RNA structure, and also generalized to modeling polymerase drop-off in other sequence census-based experiments.

New regulatory roles continue to emerge for both natural and engineered noncoding RNAs, many of which have specific secondary and tertiary structures essential to their function. Thus there is a growing need to develop technologies that enable rapid characterization of structural features within complex RNA populations. We have developed a high-throughput technique, SHAPE-Seq, that can simultaneously measure quantitative, single nucleotide-resolution secondary and tertiary structural information for hundreds of RNA molecules of arbitrary sequence. SHAPE-Seq combines selective 2'-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension (SHAPE) chemistry with multiplexed paired-end deep sequencing of primer extension products. This generates millions of sequencing reads, which are then analyzed using a fully automated data analysis pipeline, based on a rigorous maximum likelihood model of the SHAPE-Seq experiment. We demonstrate the ability of SHAPE-Seq to accurately infer secondary and tertiary structural information, detect subtle conformational changes due to single nucleotide point mutations, and simultaneously measure the structures of a complex pool of different RNA molecules. SHAPE-Seq thus represents a powerful step toward making the study of RNA secondary and tertiary structures high throughput and accessible to a wide array of scientific pursuits, from fundamental biological investigations to engineering RNA for synthetic biological systems.