Yfr1 is a Cyanobacterial functional RNA that was identified by a comparative genome

Comparative genomics

Comparative genomics is the study of the relationship of genome structure and function across different biological species or strains. Comparative genomics is an attempt to take advantage of the information provided by the signatures of selection to understand the function and evolutionary...

 based screen for RNAs

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

 in cyanobacteria. Further analysis has shown that the RNA is well conserved and highly expressed

Gene expression

Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product. These products are often proteins, but in non-protein coding genes such as ribosomal RNA , transfer RNA or small nuclear RNA genes, the product is a functional RNA...

 in cyanobacteria. and is required for growth under several stress condition Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

 research combined with follow-up experiments have shown that Yfr1 inhibits the translation of the proteins PMM1119 and PMM1121 by an antisense interaction by base pairing at the ribosomal binding site

Ribosomal Binding Site

A ribosomal binding site is a sequence on mRNA that is bound by the ribosome when initiating protein translation.It can be either the 5' cap of a messenger RNA in eukaryotes, a region 6-7 nucleotides upstream of the start codon AUG in prokaryotes , or an internal ribosome entry site in viruses...

.