Fig. 2

Stability of processed transcripts of the cip-cel operon determined by stem-loops at both ends. a Secondary structure prediction of IRs harboring RNA cleavage sites. The cleavage sites identified by primer extension are indicated by red arrows. b, c Effect of deletion of SL2 in IR1 using dual-fluorescence reporter system, as analyzed by Northern blotting (b) and qRT-PCR (c). d–g Effect of the addition of SL2 into IR2 and IR4, as analyzed by Northern blotting (d, f) and qRT-PCR (e, g). Black arrows highlight the positions of bands that correspond to transcripts, as indicated on the right side of the panel. 16S rRNA was used as a loading control. Error bars indicate the standard deviation of the mean from experiments done in triplicate