Detection, predicted secondary structure, and target prediction of sRNAs isolated from the S. pneumoniae TIGR4 strain. (A) srn135, (B) srn266, (C) srn502, and (D) srn400. The arrows indicate the size of the sRNA detected by Northern blotting, which agrees with the size predicted by sequencing. (C) RNA molecular weight marker. The putative mRNA targets for srn135, srn266, srn502, and srn400 (P-values of 9.08 × 10−4, 1.77 × 10−4, 1.39 × 10−4, and 1.15 × 10−3, respectively) predicted by TargetRNA software are shown. The secondary structures were predicted using RNAfold server (ΔG values of −14.6, −28.2, −79.5, and −23.1 kcal/mol for srn135, srn266, srn502, and srn400, respectively). The sRNA region predicted to associate with the target mRNAs is highlighted in gray. The start codons and SD are in bold, underlined letters.
