Folding Kinetics of Riboswitch Transcriptional Terminators

Riboswitches control the expression of genes in bacteria by halting gene transcription or allowing it to proceed based on the presence of ligands in solution. A key feature of every riboswitch is a transcriptional terminator in which the messenger RNA folds into a secondary structure with the stem-loop structure of a hairpin. Through kinetic Monte Carlo simulation we show that terminators have been naturally selected to fold with high reliability on the time-scale of gene transcription. This efficient folding behavior is preserved among two classes of riboswitch and among two species of bacteria.