Microbes and RNA – Not Something to Sneeze At

You’ve heard the phrase "don’t kill the messenger," but what if the "messenger" (e.g., mRNA) was inherently designed to kill you? A key frontier in understanding the pathogenesis of many infectious diseases is the role of microbial RNAs. Groundbreaking discoveries from CRISPR to riboswitches have established RNA-based processes as novel, fascinating, and powerful entities in the microbial world. It's a pretty good bet that there's a lot more out there to be discovered.

This collection provides a set of accessible articles on various aspects of RNA biology in microbial systems. We hope that they will bring you up to speed on several interesting aspects of microbial molecular biology, and also stoke your interest to investigate and expand our understanding of RNAs in the microbial world.

Jeff Wilusz, Editor in Chief, WIREs RNA

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