Engineering mRNA stability in E. coli by the addition of synthetic hairpins using a 5' cassette system.

An expression system has been developed for the introduction of DNA cassettes into the region between the transcription and translation start sites of a gene of interest. This cassette system was used to engineer mRNA stability through the introduction of hairpins at the 5' end. A synthetic DNA cassette was designed so that the resulting mRNA hairpin would be positioned one nucleotide from the 5' mRNA end. The hairpin-containing mRNA exhibited a half-life 3 times that of the mRNA with no hairpin, resulting in increases in both mRNA and protein levels. These results indicate that it is possible to engineer mRNA stability as an additional means of controlling gene expression.