Pathogenic Microbiology Commons^™

Regulation Of The Escherichia Coli Hipba Toxin-Antitoxin System By Proteolysis, Sonja Hansen, Marin Vulić, Tien-Jui Yen, Maria A. Schumacher, Richard G. Brennan, Kim Lewis

Kim Lewis

Bacterial populations produce antibiotic-tolerant persister cells. A number of recent studies point to the involvement of toxin/antitoxin (TA) modules in persister formation. hipBA is a type II TA module that codes for the HipB antitoxin and the HipA toxin. HipA is an EF-Tu kinase, which causes protein synthesis inhibition and dormancy upon phosphorylation of its substrate. Antitoxins are labile proteins that are degraded by one of the cytosolic ATP-dependent proteases. We followed the rate of HipB degradation in different protease deficient strains and found that HipB was stabilized in a lon- background. These findings were confirmed in an in vitro …