Riboswitch-inspired toehold riboregulators for gene regulation in Escherichia coli

This dataset comprises flow cytometry data accompanying a publication on the development of synthetic riboregulators. These riboregulators were inspired by the architecture of naturally occurring riboswitches and toehold-mediated strand displacement. Specifically, we adopt the toehold switch hairpin and inserted regulatory sequences within the loop region of which accessibility can be controlled by toehold-mediated strand displacement. We utilized this design principle to develop toehold translation repressor and toehold transcriptional repressor, which regulate mCherry expression in <em>E. coli </em>in translational and transcriptional levels with certain ON/OFF ratios. Furthermore, we combined these two riboregulators and developed them into a NOR gate switch that can regulate downstream GFP expression in <em>E. coli </em>with different input conditions of trigger RNA. We used flow cytometry to quantify the expression level of the NOR gate switch under different inputs.