Type II toxin: antitoxin systems. More than small selfish entities?

Bacterial Toxin–Antitoxin Systems: More Than Selfish Entities?

Bacterial toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are diverse and widespread in the prokaryotic kingdom. They are composed of closely linked genes encoding a stable toxin that can harm the host cell and its cognate labile antitoxin, which protects the host from the toxin's deleterious effect. TA systems are thought to invade bacterial genomes through horizontal gene transfer. Some TA systems might behave ...

Endoribonuclease type II toxin-antitoxin systems: functional or selfish?

Most bacterial genomes have multiple type II toxin-antitoxin systems (TAs) that encode two proteins which are referred to as a toxin and an antitoxin. Toxins inhibit a cellular process, while the interaction of the antitoxin with the toxin attenuates the toxin's activity. Endoribonuclease-encoding TAs cleave RNA in a sequence-dependent fashion, resulting in translational inhibition. To account ...

Bacterial Toxin-antitoxin Systems Translation Inhibitors Everywhere the Toxin-antitoxin System Framework the Selfish Nature of Toxin-antitoxin Systems

*Correspondence to: Laurence Van Melderen; Email: [email protected] Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are composed of two elements: a toxic protein and an antitoxin which is either an RNA (type I and III) or a protein (type II). Type II systems are abundant in bacterial genomes in which theymove via horizontal gene transfer. They are generally composed of two genes organized in an operon, encoding ...

Identification and characterization of type II toxin-antitoxin systems

Type II toxin/antitoxin MqsR/MqsA controls type V toxin/antitoxin GhoT/GhoS.

Toxin endoribonucleases of toxin/antitoxin (TA) systems regulate protein production by selectively degrading mRNAs but have never been shown to control other TA systems. Here we demonstrate that toxin MqsR of the MqsR/MqsA system enriches toxin ghoT mRNA in vivo and in vitro, since this transcript lacks the primary MqsR cleavage site 5'-GCU. GhoT is a membrane toxin that causes the ghost cell p...