6th FEMS Congress of European Microbiologists

Activity: Talk or presentation › Talk or presentation at a conference

Description

Prokaryotic toxin-antitoxin modules are involved in the establishment of persister cells. The latter involves complex regulatory mechanisms that link the regulation of protein activity to regulation of transcription. Recent structural and biochemical data shows a plethora of molecular mechanisms to achieve this goal. In the phd/doc module, conditional co-operativity is established via a combination of negative co-operativity through entropic exclusion of and IDP domain combined with a low to high affinity switch for the interaction between toxin and antitoxin. While Doc stabilizes the DNA binding conformation of Phd, Phd likewise inhibits the kinase activity of Doc and simultaneously prevents misfolding of Doc. The same phenomenon of conditional co-operativity is observed for mazEF and ccdAB, but with a different structural basis, although intrinsic disorder in the antitoxin is a common theme. Other TA modules such as higBA are regulated through a seemingly more simple mechanism where the antitoxin acts as the sole repressor, while toxin significantly weakens operator binding. Such a mechanism is observed in several higBA modules as well as in mqsRA and allows for transcription regulation without the specific need of intrinsic disorder.
Period6 Jun 2015 → 11 Jun 2015
Event title6th FEMS Congress of European Microbiologists
Event typeConference
LocationMaastricht, Netherlands

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