Messenger RNA Turnover Processes in Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, and Emerging Studies in Staphylococcus aureus
Figure 5
Degradation profiles of S. aureus wild type and pnpA-mutant cells. RNA signal intensity values for each GeneChip transcript are plotted at 0 minute (T0; -axis) and 5 minutes (T5; -axis) posttranscriptional arrest. Red represents transcripts considered “present” in both T0 and T5 samples (Affymetrix algorithms). Yellow represents transcripts that are “absent” in both samples. Blue represents transcripts that are present in one sample but absent in the second. Grey dashed lines indicate calculated lower limit of sensitivity for each sample. Results show that following 5 minutes of transcriptional arrest, 51.1% (1287 transcripts) of mRNA species are completely degraded within wild type S. aureus cells. Conversely, 17.6% (444 transcripts) of mRNA species were undetectable within isogenic pnpA-mutant cells at 5 minutes posttranscriptional arrest, suggesting that PNPase plays a role in global S. aureus mRNA turnover.
