scholarly journals A bacterial prophage small peptide counteracts DnaA activities in B. subtilis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magali Ventroux ◽  
Marie-Francoise Noirot-Gros

AbstractBacteriophages are able to hijack host essential machineries to benefit their fitness and assemble their own progeny. Phage proteins targeting major bacterial pathways can be powerful tools to understand cell functions and have possible applications in human health and industry. Bacterial genomes also harbor cryptic prophages carrying genes that may contribute to their host fitness and properties. The cryptic prophages are mostly transcriptionally silent and most of the functions they encode are not annotated. In B. subtilis, the 48 kb-long skin element is a prophage carrying the yqaF-yqaN operon, which is tightly regulated by the Xre-like repressor sknR. The small yqaH gene potentially encodes the protein YqaH in absence of SknR. It was previously reported that YqaH interacts with the replication initiator DnaA in yeast two-hybrid assay and its expression in B. subtilis causes defects in the chromosomal cycle. In this study, we report that, in addition to DnaA, YqaH interacts with Spo0A, a master regulator of sporulation. To decipher yqaH mode of action, we used the yeast two-hybrid to isolate single mutations in yqaH that separate interactions with DnaA and Spo0A. We isolated mutations that caused loss-of-interaction (LOI) with DnaA but not Spo0A. However, all mutations disrupting the interaction with Spo0A were also DnaA-LOI functions, suggesting that these functions could not be separated. We found that expression YqaH carrying DnaA-LOI mutations affects both chromosome integrity and DnaA-mediated transcription, leading to growth inhibition as well as preventing bacterial development such as sporulation and biofilm formation. These results show that YqaH acts as an antimicrobial peptide in B. subtilis and pave the way for the structural design of mutants with improved antibacterial action.

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (07) ◽  
pp. 1365-1399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryoiti Kiyama

Estrogen, a steroid hormone, is associated with several human activities, including environmental, industrial, agricultural, pharmaceutical and medical fields. In this review paper, estrogenic activity associated with traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) is discussed first by focusing on the assays needed to detect estrogenic activity (animal test, cell assay, ligand-binding assay, protein assay, reporter-gene assay, transcription assay and yeast two-hybrid assay), and then, their sources, the nature of activities (estrogenic or anti-estrogenic, or other types), and pathways/functions, along with the assay used to detect the activity, which is followed by a summary of effective chemicals found in or associated with TCM. Applications of estrogens in TCM are then discussed by a comprehensive search of the literature, which include basic study/pathway analysis, cell functions, diseases/symptoms and medicine/supplements. Discrepancies and conflicting cases about estrogenicity of TCM among assays or between TCM and their effective chemicals, are focused on to enlarge estrogenic potentials of TCM by referring to omic knowledge such as transcriptome, proteome, glycome, chemome, cellome, ligandome, interactome and effectome.


2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (9) ◽  
pp. 1583-1591
Author(s):  
Li-Yan XUE ◽  
Bing LUO ◽  
Li-Quan ZHU ◽  
Yong-Jun YANG ◽  
He-Cui ZHANG ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. V. Borca ◽  
E. A. Vuono ◽  
E. Ramirez-Medina ◽  
P. Azzinaro ◽  
K. A. Berggren ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT The E2 protein in classical swine fever (CSF) virus (CSFV) is the major virus structural glycoprotein and is an essential component of the viral particle. E2 has been shown to be involved in several functions, including virus adsorption, induction of protective immunity, and virulence in swine. Using the yeast two-hybrid system, we previously identified a swine host protein, dynactin subunit 6 (DCTN6) (a component of the cell dynactin complex), as a specific binding partner for E2. We confirmed the interaction between DCTN6 and E2 proteins in CSFV-infected swine cells by using two additional independent methodologies, i.e., coimmunoprecipitation and proximity ligation assays. E2 residues critical for mediating the protein-protein interaction with DCTN6 were mapped by a reverse yeast two-hybrid approach using a randomly mutated E2 library. A recombinant CSFV mutant, E2ΔDCTN6v, harboring specific substitutions in those critical residues was developed to assess the importance of the E2-DCTN6 protein-protein interaction for virus replication and virulence in swine. CSFV E2ΔDCTN6v showed reduced replication, compared with the parental virus, in an established swine cell line (SK6) and in primary swine macrophage cultures. Remarkably, animals infected with CSFV E2ΔDCTN6v remained clinically normal during the 21-day observation period, which suggests that the ability of CSFV E2 to bind host DCTN6 protein efficiently during infection may play a role in viral virulence. IMPORTANCE Structural glycoprotein E2 is an important component of CSFV due to its involvement in many virus activities, particularly virus-host interactions. Here, we present the description and characterization of the protein-protein interaction between E2 and the swine host protein DCTN6 during virus infection. The E2 amino acid residues mediating the interaction with DCTN6 were also identified. A recombinant CSFV harboring mutations disrupting the E2-DCTN6 interaction was created. The effect of disrupting the E2-DCTN6 protein-protein interaction was studied using reverse genetics. It was shown that the same amino acid substitutions that abrogated the E2-DCTN6 interaction in vitro constituted a critical factor in viral virulence in the natural host, domestic swine. This highlights the potential importance of the E2-DCTN6 protein-protein interaction in CSFV virulence and provides possible mechanisms of virus attenuation for the development of improved CSF vaccines.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 1040-1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasunori Kawagoshi ◽  
Yukiko Tsukagoshi ◽  
Isao Fukunaga

Author(s):  
Orsolya Frittmann ◽  
Vamsi K Gali ◽  
Miklos Halmai ◽  
Robert Toth ◽  
Zsuzsanna Gyorfy ◽  
...  

Abstract DNA damages that hinder the movement of the replication complex can ultimately lead to cell death. To avoid that, cells possess several DNA damage bypass mechanisms. The Rad18 ubiquitin ligase controls error-free and mutagenic pathways that help the replication complex to bypass DNA lesions by monoubiquitylating PCNA at stalled replication forks. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, two of the Rad18 governed pathways are activated by monoubiquitylated PCNA and they involve translesion synthesis polymerases, whereas a third pathway needs subsequent polyubiquitylation of the same PCNA residue by another ubiquitin ligase the Rad5 protein, and it employs template switching. The goal of this study was to dissect the regulatory role of the multidomain Rad18 in DNA damage bypass using a structure-function based approach. Investigating deletion and point mutant RAD18 variants in yeast genetic and yeast two-hybrid assays we show that the Zn-finger of Rad18 mediates its interaction with Rad5, and the N-terminal adjacent region is also necessary for Rad5 binding. Moreover, results of the yeast two-hybrid and in vivo ubiquitylation experiments raise the possibility that direct interaction between Rad18 and Rad5 might not be necessary for the function of the Rad5 dependent pathway. The presented data also reveal that yeast Rad18 uses different domains to mediate its association with itself and with Rad5. Our results contribute to better understanding of the complex machinery of DNA damage bypass pathways.


2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 4317-4326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroshi Qadota ◽  
Kristina B. Mercer ◽  
Rachel K. Miller ◽  
Kozo Kaibuchi ◽  
Guy M. Benian

By yeast two-hybrid screening, we found three novel interactors (UNC-95, LIM-8, and LIM-9) for UNC-97/PINCH in Caenorhabditis elegans. All three proteins contain LIM domains that are required for binding. Among the three interactors, LIM-8 and LIM-9 also bind to UNC-96, a component of sarcomeric M-lines. UNC-96 and LIM-8 also bind to the C-terminal portion of a myosin heavy chain (MHC), MHC A, which resides in the middle of thick filaments in the proximity of M-lines. All interactions identified by yeast two-hybrid assays were confirmed by in vitro binding assays using purified proteins. All three novel UNC-97 interactors are expressed in body wall muscle and by antibodies localize to M-lines. Either a decreased or an increased dosage of UNC-96 results in disorganization of thick filaments. Our previous studies showed that UNC-98, a C2H2 Zn finger protein, acts as a linkage between UNC-97, an integrin-associated protein, and MHC A in myosin thick filaments. In this study, we demonstrate another mechanism by which this linkage occurs: from UNC-97 through LIM-8 or LIM-9/UNC-96 to myosin.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 304
Author(s):  
Yao Chi ◽  
Li-Long Pan ◽  
Shu-Sheng Liu ◽  
Shahid Mansoor ◽  
Xiao-Wei Wang

Cotton leaf curl Multan virus (CLCuMuV) is one of the major casual agents of cotton leaf curl disease. Previous studies show that two indigenous whitefly species of the Bemisia tabaci complex, Asia II 1 and Asia II 7, are able to transmit CLCuMuV, but the molecular mechanisms underlying the transmission are poorly known. In this study, we attempted to identify the whitefly proteins involved in CLCuMuV transmission. First, using a yeast two-hybrid system, we identified 54 candidate proteins of Asia II 1 that putatively can interact with the coat protein of CLCuMuV. Second, we examined interactions between the CLCuMuV coat protein and several whitefly proteins, including vacuolar protein sorting-associated protein (Vps) twenty associated 1 (Vta1). Third, using RNA interference, we found that Vta1 positively regulated CLCuMuV acquisition and transmission by the Asia II 1 whitefly. In addition, we showed that the interaction between the CLCuMuV coat protein and Vta1 from the whitefly Middle East-Asia Minor (MEAM1), a poor vector of CLCuMuV, was much weaker than that between Asia II 1 Vta1 and the CLCuMuV coat protein. Silencing of Vta1 in MEAM1 did not affect the quantity of CLCuMuV acquired by the whitefly. Taken together, our results suggest that Vta1 may play an important role in the transmission of CLCuMuV by the whitefly.


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