The minimal meningococcal ProQ protein has an intrinsic capacity for structure-based global RNA recognition.

FinO-domain proteins are a widespread family of bacterial RNA-binding proteins with regulatory functions. Their target spectrum ranges from a single RNA pair, in the case of plasmid-encoded FinO, to global RNA regulons, as with enterobacterial ProQ. To assess whether the FinO domain itself is intrinsically selective or promiscuous, we determine in vivo targets of Neisseria meningitidis, which consists of solely a FinO domain.

Investigating RNA-Protein Interactions in Neisseria meningitidis by RIP-Seq Analysis.

Deep sequencing technology has revolutionized transcriptome analyses of both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq), which is based on massively parallel sequencing of cDNAs, has been used to annotate transcript boundaries and has revealed widespread antisense transcription as well as a wealth of novel noncoding transcripts in many bacterial pathogens. Moreover, RNA-seq is nowadays also widely used to comprehensively explore the interaction between RNA-binding proteins and their RNA targets on a genome-wide level in many human-pathogenic bacteria.

The CRISPR/Cas system in Neisseria meningitidis affects bacterial adhesion to human nasopharyngeal epithelial cells.

Neisseria meningitidis, a commensal β-proteobacterium of the human nasopharynx, constitutes a worldwide leading cause of sepsis and epidemic meningitis. A recent genome-wide association study suggested an association of its type II-C CRISPR/Cas system with carriage and thus less invasive lineages. Here, we show that knock-out strains lacking the Cas9 protein are impaired in the adhesion to human nasopharyngeal cells which constitutes a central step in the pathogenesis of invasive meningococcal disease.

The primary transcriptome of Neisseria meningitidis and its interaction with the RNA chaperone Hfq.

Neisseria meningitidis is a human commensal that can also cause life-threatening meningitis and septicemia. Despite growing evidence for RNA-based regulation in meningococci, their transcriptome structure and output of regulatory small RNAs (sRNAs) are incompletely understood. Using dRNA-seq, we have mapped at single-nucleotide resolution the primary transcriptome of N.