Bacteria of class Bacteroidia lack Shine-Dalgarno (SD) sequences and instead rely on other messenger RNA (mRNA) features, including upstream adenines, for start codon selection. Bacteroidia ribosomes contain the anti-SD (ASD) sequence of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) but are "blind" to SD sequences. This occurs due to the sequestration of the ASD through interactions with bS21, bS18, and bS6 on the 30S platform domain. In many Bacteroidia, including Flavobacterium johnsoniae, there is one gene with a