Biology

Dr. Supratim Sengupta
Dept. of Physics, IISER Kolkata (Mini-symposium on Physicochemical phenomena and how they shape biological processes - Talk III)

Riboswitches are regulatory RNA that are found in bacterial as well as eukaryotic genomes. In bacteria, they regulate expression of the downstream genes by undergoing conformational changes on binding of a ligand while in eukaryotes, they are involved in alternative splicing. Several different classes of riboswitches that are distinguished by the ligand that binds to it have been discovered. Due to their widespread presence in bacteria and their critical role in regulating functionally important genes, they can be used as potential drug targets. After describing an efficient method for detection of riboswitches, I will discuss how phylogenetic analysis and comparative genomics can provide important insights into the regulatory role of these non-coding RNA across prokaryotic and eukaryotic domains. Finally, I will draw some conclusions about the evolutionary origin of riboswitches based on our knowledge of their phylogenetic distribution.