Development of two compatible plasmids to assess sRNA-mediated post-transcriptional regulation in Acinetobacter baumannii

Post-transcriptional regulation can be mediated by small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) in bacteria, which can act by base-pairing to a target mRNA. The discovery and mechanistic validation of base-pairing sRNAs in multidrug-resistant <i>Acinetobacter baumannii</i> has been hampered by the lack of genetic tools to assess RNA-RNA interactions. Here, we created two compatible plasmids for <i>A. baumannii</i>, which addresses this need. The newly designed plasmids validated the known Aar sRNA-<i>carO</i> mRNA and a new interaction of sRNA44 and the mRNA of the biofilm-associated protein Bap. The new plasmid system should accelerate the mechanistic characterization of sRNAs in <i>A. baumannii</i>.