{"doi":"10.7554/elife.51737","title":"Regulation of mRNA translation by a photoriboswitch","abstract":"Optogenetic tools have revolutionized the study of receptor-mediated processes, but such tools are lacking for RNA-controlled systems. In particular, light-activated regulatory RNAs are needed for spatiotemporal control of gene expression. To fill this gap, we used in vitro selection to isolate a novel riboswitch that selectively binds the trans isoform of a stiff-stilbene (amino-tSS)–a rapidly and reversibly photoisomerizing small molecule. Structural probing revealed that the RNA binds amino-tSS about 100-times stronger than the cis photoisoform (amino-cSS). In vitro and in vivo functional analysis showed that the riboswitch, termed Werewolf-1 (Were-1), inhibits translation of a downstream open reading frame when bound to amino-tSS. Photoisomerization of the ligand with a sub-millisecond pulse of light induced the protein expression. In contrast, amino-cSS supported protein expression, which was inhibited upon photoisomerization to amino-tSS. Reversible photoregulation of gene expression using a genetically encoded RNA will likely facilitate high-resolution spatiotemporal analysis of complex RNA processes.","journal":"eLife","year":2020,"id":101308,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":27,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.952,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":496033,"name":"Michael M Abdelsayed","orcid":"0000-0002-9622-832X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":496034,"name":"Luiz F. M. Passalacqua","orcid":"0000-0002-5490-2427","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":496035,"name":"Fabio Chizzolini","orcid":"0000-0002-5891-4759","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":496036,"name":"Kasireddy Sudarshan","orcid":"0000-0002-7072-3226","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390862,"name":"A. Richard Chamberlin","orcid":"0000-0002-4685-4672","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":496037,"name":"Jiří Míšek","orcid":"0000-0003-4645-7113","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":496038,"name":"Andrej Lupták","orcid":"0000-0002-0632-5442","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":496032,"name":"Kelly A Rotstan","orcid":"0000-0002-2189-4643","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":54,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T22:39:38.259162Z","pmid":"32053109","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}