The Pseudomonas rpsL leader is a putative attenuator RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

 element identified by bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

 searches within bacteria of the Pseudomonadaceae

Pseudomonadaceae

The Pseudomonadaceae is a family of bacteria that includes the genera Azomonas, Azomonotrichon, Azorhizophilus, Azotobacter, Cellvibrio, Mesophilobacter, Pseudomonas , Rhizobacter, Rugamonas, and Serpens...

 phylum. It is located upstream of the operon encoding ribosomal protein

Ribosomal protein

A ribosomal protein is any of the proteins that, in conjunction with rRNA, make up the ribosomal subunits involved in the cellular process of translation. A large part of the knowledge about these organic molecules has come from the study of E. coli ribosomes. Most ribosomic proteins have been...

s S12 and S7 (rpsL and rpsG genes respectively), and presents a Rho-independent terminator

Intrinsic termination

Intrinsic termination is a mechanism in prokaryotes that causes mRNA transcription to be stopped. In this mechanism, the mRNA contains a sequence that can base pair with itself to form a stem-loop structure 7-20 base pairs in length that is also rich in cytosine-guanine base pairs...

 at the 3' end. This RNA is presumed to operate as a non-coding ribosomal protein leader potentially interacting with the S12 or S7 proteins, which are encoded by the operon

Operon

In genetics, an operon is a functioning unit of genomic DNA containing a cluster of genes under the control of a single regulatory signal or promoter. The genes are transcribed together into an mRNA strand and either translated together in the cytoplasm, or undergo trans-splicing to create...

. The motif might be related to other rpsL leaders, such as the Rickettsia rpsL leader

Rickettsia rpsL leader

The Rickettsia rpsL leader is a putative attenuator element identified by bioinformatics within bacteria of the α-proteobacterial Rickettsia genus. It is located upstream of the operon encoding ribosomal proteins S12 and S7 , and presents a Rho-independent terminator at the 3' end...

.