
Lacto-usp RNA motif

The Lacto-"usp" RNA motif is a conserved RNA structure identified in bacteria by bioinformatics. Lacto-"usp" RNAs are found exclusively in lactic acid bacteria, and exclusively in the possible 5′ untranslated regions of (5′ UTRs) operons that contain a hypothetical gene and a "usp" gene. The "usp" gene encodes the universal stress protein. It was proposed that the Lacto-"usp" might correspond to the 6S RNA of the relevant species, because four of five of these species lack a predicted 6S RNA, and 6S RNAs commonly occur in 5′ UTRs of "usp" genes. However, given that the Lacto-"usp" RNA motif is much shorter than the standard 6S RNA structure, the function of Lacto-"usp" RNAs remains unclear.