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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2016 Apr 30;39:182–191. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2016.03.019

Figure 1. The centrality of RNA structures in regulating cellular processes.

Figure 1

Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) play widespread and diverse roles in the regulation of cellular processes. (Center) A schematic of representative classes of the structures formed by ncRNAs including ribozymes (orange), riboswitches (green), small RNAs (sRNAs, blue), and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs, purple). The surrounding panels depict representative functions of each of these classes including (clockwise) concatemer cleavage in rolling circle replication [56] and group II intron splicing [57] (ribozymes); metal-ion sensing [10–12], regulation of biosynthetic operons [13], and regulation of sRNA expression [16,17] (riboswitches); sequestration of regulatory factors [16,17] and information processing in regulatory networks [22] (sRNAs); and controlling DNA methylation [53] and scaffolding for inter-chromosomal structures [52] (lncRNAs). Functional RNA motifs are highlighted in colors corresponding to the center schematic. Protein components are shaded grey.