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Full-Text Articles in Microbiology
Characterization Of Tram, A Required Bacteroides Fragilis Conjugal Apparatus Protein That Interacts With The B. Fragilis Putative Coupling Protein Bcta And The B. Fragilis Relaxase Protein Bmph, Mai Thi Thanh Nguyen
Characterization Of Tram, A Required Bacteroides Fragilis Conjugal Apparatus Protein That Interacts With The B. Fragilis Putative Coupling Protein Bcta And The B. Fragilis Relaxase Protein Bmph, Mai Thi Thanh Nguyen
Dissertations
Bacteroides spp. organisms, the most prominent bacteria of the human colon, are reservoirs of antibiotic resistance genes which promiscuously transfer within and from the genus via conjugation. The B. fragilis clinical isolate LV23 harbors a 37kb conjugative transposon, BTF-37. Two important conjugal apparatus proteins encoded by BTF-37 are BctA, a predicted coupling protein (CP) that powers DNA translocation, and ORF7 (TraM). In this study, we demonstrated that TraM exhibits characteristics of a required conjugal apparatus protein including 1) upregulated expression under conjugation conditions; 2) localization to the bacterial inner membrane; 3) interaction with the putative coupling protein BctA and the …