TY - JOUR
AU - Filutowicz, Marcin
AB - AbstractThe emergence of multiply antibiotic-resistant microorganisms in the environment has become a serious public health threat. To address this, our lab has devised a methodology in which antimicrobial agents are transferred into unwanted cells using the process of bacterial conjugation. In the work described here, we pursued proteins that cause plasmid over-replication as potential antimicrobial agents. Our focus was on the pir-encoded π protein of plasmid R6K that possesses both positive and negative functions in controlling γ origin-based replication. We observed that three of four pir mutations examined, including two in-frame deletions, severely impaired negative plasmid-replication control. The resulting over-replication phenotype was particularly strong when a pir mutant was placed in cis to γ origin. In conjugative mating experiments with several representatives of the family Enterobacteriaceae, the plasmids expressed postconjugational antimicrobial activity. The potential utility of a conjugation-based antimicrobial approach is discussed. Additionally, we describe the replication inhibitory function of a novel and useful Rep protein variant, π•M36A^M38A, which binds iteron DNA exclusively as dimers.
TI - Small deletion variants of the replication protein, π, and their potential for over-replication-based antimicrobial activity
JF - FEMS Microbiology Letters
DO - 10.1111/j.1574-6968.2006.00364.x
DA - 2006-08-17
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/small-deletion-variants-of-the-replication-protein-and-their-potential-VRHhrG2Lw9
SP - 245
EP - 252
VL - 261
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -