MvaT proteins in Pseudomonas spp.: a novel class of H-NS-like proteins.

The H-NS protein was isolated for the first time from Escherichia coli as a contaminant in RNA polymerase preparations (Jacquet et al., 1971). A few years later, on the basis of nucleotide sequence homology, H-NS proteins were identified by different groups in other enteric or related bacteria such as Proteus mirabilis, Serratia marcescens, Salmonella typhimurium and Erwinia chrysanthemi (Ussery et al., 1994). Moreover, by in silico analysis of the first completely sequenced bacterial genome, an additional H-NS-related protein was detected in Haemophilus influenzae (Fleischmann et al., 1995). Finally, a paralogous protein named StpA was found in both Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium (Dorman et al., 1999). All these proteins display more than 70%