Many clinical isolates of Streptococcus mutans produce peptide antibiotics called mutacins. Mutacin production may play an important role in the ecology of S. mutans in dental plaque. In this study, inactivation of a histidine kinase gene, ciaH, abolished mutacin production. Surprisingly, the same mutation also diminished competence development, stress tolerance, and sucrose-dependent biofilm f...

The Streptococcus mutans hdrRM operon encodes a novel two-gene regulatory system induced by high cell density. Previous studies identified hdrM as the only known negative regulator of competence development in S. mutans. In the present study, we demonstrated that the HdrRM system bypasses the prototypical competence gene regulators ComC and ComDE in the transcriptional regulation of the compete...

Streptococcus mutans, a major oral pathogen responsible for dental caries formation, possesses a variety of mechanisms for survival in the human oral cavity, where the conditions of the external environment are diverse and in a constant state of flux. The formation of biofilms, survival under conditions of acidic pH, and production of mutacins are considered to be important virulence determinan...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The mutans streptococci (MS) are a group of 7 species of dental cariesassociated bacteria of which Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus are the most important in humans. Many MS produce bacteriocin-like inhibitory substances (BLIS), some of which have been characterised as small peptides capable of inhibiting the growth of closely-related species. These peptid...

There are suggestions that the phylogeny of Streptococcus mutans, a member of the human indigenous biota that is transmitted mostly mother to child, might parallel the evolutionary history of its human host. The relatedness and phylogeny of plasmid-containing strains of S. mutans were examined based on chromosomal DNA fingerprints (CDF), a hypervariable region (HVR) of a 5.6-kb plasmid, the rRN...

UNLABELLED Lantibiotics are ribosomally synthesized peptide antibiotics composed of an N-terminal leader peptide that is cleaved to yield the active antibacterial peptide. Significant advancements in molecular tools that promote the study of lantibiotic biosynthesis can be used in Streptococcus mutans. Herein, we further our understanding of leader peptide sequence and core peptide structural r...

abstract background: streptococcus mutans in the oral cavities sable to produce mutacin (bacteriocin-like substances) with antibiotic properties. the aim of this study was to investigate the frequency and expression of genes encoding mutacins typei, ii, iii and iv and also two of 8 genes in a cluster encoding the putative bacteriocins, the designated bsm 283, bsm 299, bsm 423, bsm 1889c, bsm 18...

Mutacin II is a post-translationally modified lantibiotic peptide secreted by Streptococcus mutans T8, which inhibits the energy metabolism of sensitive cells. The deduced amino acid sequence of promutacin II is NRWWQGVVPTVSYECRMNSWQHVFTCC, which is capable of forming three thioether bridges. It was not obvious, however, how the three thioether bridges are organized. To examine the bridging, th...

Streptococcus mutans JH1000 and its derivatives were previously shown (J. D. Hillman, K. P. Johnson, and B. I. Yaphe, Infect. Immun. 44:141-144, 1984) to produce a low-molecular-weight, broad-spectrum bacteriocin-like inhibitory substance (BLIS). The thermosensitive vector pTV1-OK harboring Tn917 was used to isolate a BLIS-deficient mutant, DM25, and the mutated gene was recovered by shotgun cl...

Streptococcus mutans JH1140 is an oral bacterium known to produce the bacteriocin mutacin 1140, and the strain has been genetically engineered to combat dental caries. Here, we report the 2.0-Mb draft genome of S. mutans JH1140. This genome provides new insights into the strain's superior colonization properties and its utility in replacement therapy.