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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Lipid Surfaces And Glutamate Anions Enhance Formation Of Dynamic Biomolecular Condensates Containing Bacterial Cell Division Protein Ftsz And Its Dna-Bound Regulator Slma, Gianfranco Paccione, Miguel Á Robles-Ramos, Carlos Alfonso, Marta Sobrinos-Sanguino, William Margolin, Silvia Zorrilla, Begoña Monterroso, Germán Rivas Nov 2022

Lipid Surfaces And Glutamate Anions Enhance Formation Of Dynamic Biomolecular Condensates Containing Bacterial Cell Division Protein Ftsz And Its Dna-Bound Regulator Slma, Gianfranco Paccione, Miguel Á Robles-Ramos, Carlos Alfonso, Marta Sobrinos-Sanguino, William Margolin, Silvia Zorrilla, Begoña Monterroso, Germán Rivas

Journal Articles

Dynamic biomolecular condensates formed by liquid-liquid phase separation can regulate the spatial and temporal organization of proteins, thus modulating their functional activity in cells. Previous studies showed that the cell division protein FtsZ from Escherichia coli formed dynamic phase-separated condensates with nucleoprotein complexes containing the FtsZ spatial regulator SlmA under crowding conditions, with potential implications for condensate-mediated spatiotemporal control of FtsZ activity in cell division. In the present study, we assessed formation of these condensates in the presence of lipid surfaces and glutamate ions to better approximate the E. coli intracellular environment. We found that potassium glutamate substantially promoted the …


Overlapping And Distinct Functions Of The Paralogous Pagr Regulators Of Bacillus Anthracis, Ileana D Corsi, Theresa M Koehler Sep 2022

Overlapping And Distinct Functions Of The Paralogous Pagr Regulators Of Bacillus Anthracis, Ileana D Corsi, Theresa M Koehler

Journal Articles

The Bacillus anthracis pagA gene, encoding the protective antigen component of anthrax toxin, is part of a bicistronic operon on pXO1 that codes for its own repressor, PagR1. In addition to the pagAR1 operon, PagR1 regulates sap and eag, two chromosome genes encoding components of the surface layer, a mounting structure for surface proteins involved in virulence. Genomic studies have revealed a PagR1 paralog, PagR2, encoded by a gene on pXO2. The amino acid sequences of the paralogues are 71% identical and show similarity to the ArsR family of transcription regulators. We determined that the expression of either rPagR1 …


A Nickase Cas9 Gene-Drive System Promotes Super-Mendelian Inheritance In Drosophila, Víctor López Del Amo, Sara Sanz Juste, Valentino M Gantz May 2022

A Nickase Cas9 Gene-Drive System Promotes Super-Mendelian Inheritance In Drosophila, Víctor López Del Amo, Sara Sanz Juste, Valentino M Gantz

Journal Articles

CRISPR-based gene-drives have been proposed for managing insect populations, including disease-transmitting mosquitoes, due to their ability to bias their inheritance toward super-Mendelian rates (>50%). Current technologies use a Cas9 that introduces DNA double-strand breaks into the opposing wild-type allele to replace it with a copy of the gene-drive allele via DNA homology-directed repair. However, the use of different Cas9 versions is unexplored, and alternative approaches could increase the available toolkit for gene-drive designs. Here, we report a gene-drive that relies on Cas9 nickases that generate staggered paired nicks in DNA to propagate the engineered gene-drive cassette. We show that …


Nanog Prion-Like Assembly Mediates Dna Bridging To Facilitate Chromatin Reorganization And Activation Of Pluripotency, Kyoung-Jae Choi, My Diem Quan, Chuangye Qi, Joo-Hyung Lee, Phoebe S Tsoi, Mahla Zahabiyon, Aleksandar Bajic, Liya Hu, B V Venkataram Prasad, Shih-Chu Jeff Liao, Wenbo Li, Allan Chris M Ferreon, Josephine C Ferreon May 2022

Nanog Prion-Like Assembly Mediates Dna Bridging To Facilitate Chromatin Reorganization And Activation Of Pluripotency, Kyoung-Jae Choi, My Diem Quan, Chuangye Qi, Joo-Hyung Lee, Phoebe S Tsoi, Mahla Zahabiyon, Aleksandar Bajic, Liya Hu, B V Venkataram Prasad, Shih-Chu Jeff Liao, Wenbo Li, Allan Chris M Ferreon, Josephine C Ferreon

Journal Articles

Human NANOG expression resets stem cells to ground-state pluripotency. Here we identify the unique features of human NANOG that relate to its dose-sensitive function as a master transcription factor. NANOG is largely disordered, with a C-terminal prion-like domain that phase-transitions to gel-like condensates. Full-length NANOG readily forms higher-order oligomers at low nanomolar concentrations, orders of magnitude lower than typical amyloids. Using single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer and fluorescence cross-correlation techniques, we show that NANOG oligomerization is essential for bridging DNA elements in vitro. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing and Hi-C 3.0 in cells, we validate that NANOG prion-like domain assembly is …