The IMES-3 RNA motif is a conserved RNA

RNA

Ribonucleic acid , or RNA, is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life....

 structure that was identified based on metagenomics

Metagenomics

Metagenomics is the study of metagenomes, genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics or community genomics. Traditional microbiology and microbial genome sequencing rely upon cultivated clonal cultures...

 and bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

, and the underlying RNA sequences were identified independently by an earlier study. These RNAs are present in environmental sequences

RNAs present in environmental samples

A wide variety of non-coding RNAs have been identified in various species of organisms known to science. However, RNAs have also been identified in "metagenomics" sequences derived from samples of DNA or RNA extracted from the environment, which contain unknown species. Initial work in this area...

, and as of 2009 are not known to be present in any cultivated species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

. IMES-3 RNAs are abundant in comparison to ribosome

Ribosome

A ribosome is a component of cells that assembles the twenty specific amino acid molecules to form the particular protein molecule determined by the nucleotide sequence of an RNA molecule....

s in RNAs sampled from the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

.