Fig. 1.

The riboregulator and its features. Our riboregulator system regulates gene expression posttranscriptionally through the specific interaction between the crRNA and taRNA (9). The cis-repressed mRNA (crRNA) is composed of the cis-repressive sequence (CR, yellow), the RBS (blue), a stem loop (light gray), and the target gene (red). The trans-activating RNA (black) contains the trans-activating sequence (TA, green) and the stem loop binding sequence (dark gray). To initiate translation, the taRNA binds the crRNA and grants the ribosome (brown circles) access to the RBS.