MICHAEL L. CHIKINDAS,† JAN NOVÁK, ARNOLD J. M. DRIESSEN,* WIL N. KONINGS, KURT M. SCHILLING,‡ AND PAGE W. CAUFIELD Unilever Dental Research, Bebington L63 3JW, United Kingdom; Department of Oral Biology, School of Dentistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama 35294; and Department of Microbiology, Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute, University of G...

A correlation between the presence of 5.6-kilobase plasmids and bacteriocin activity was found in human-derived strains of Streptococcus mutans. Compared with bacteriocin activity of randomly selected clinical isolates of plasmid-negative strains, bacteriocin activity of plasmid-positive strains significantly inhibited not only two laboratory strains of S. mutans, OMZ176 and AHT (P less than 0....

Twenty-four mutacin-producing Streptococcus mutans strains were screened for their propensity to produce class II one-peptide bacteriocin using a deferred antagonism assay. Streptococcus salivarius and 3 mutants defective in their mannose phosphotransferase systems (mannose-PTS) were used as sensitive strains to identify which mannose-PTS could act as the docking site for class II one-peptide b...