NW ao u s, In tion

mu pairing with target mRNAs [2,3]. Hfq is conserved in a wide range of bacteria [4,5], suggesting that Hfq-binding ed by Hfq-binding sRNAs in genomic scale will greatly pairing between sRNAs and their target mRNAs is still under debate, it is clear that Hfq not only binds to the base pairs with one side of an inhibitory mRNA, thus promoting ribosome binding [3]. However, only two instances of positive regulation have been detailed studied up to now [13,14], and we have therefore focused on identifying the targets that are negatively regulated by Hfq-binding sRNAs