 There is also one NMT1 RNA in each of Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria, but these appear to be the result of recent horizontal gene transfer or sequence contamination before or during genome sequencing

NMT1 has been shown to act as part of a xanthane riboswitch that turns off gene expression when the ligand is bound.The NMT1 motif RNA were thought to likely function as cis-regulatory elements, in view of their positions upstream of protein-coding genes.Indeed, the RNAs are upstream of multiple genes that encode non-homologous proteins.