Chromosome segregation in Archaea mediated by a hybrid DNA partition machine.

ABSTRACT: Eukarya and, more recently, some bacteria have been shown to rely on a cytoskeleton-based apparatus to drive chromosome segregation. In contrast, the factors and mechanisms underpinning this fundamental process are underexplored in archaea, the third domain of life. Here we establish that the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus harbors a hybrid segrosome consisting of two interacting proteins, SegA and SegB, that play a key role in genome segregation in this organism. SegA is an ortholog of bacterial, Walker-type ParA proteins, whereas SegB is an archaea-specific factor lacking sequence identity to either eukaryotic or bacterial proteins, but sharing homology with a cluster of uncharacterized factors conserved in both crenarchaea and euryarchaea, the two major archaeal sub-phyla. We show that

SUBMITTER: Kalliomaa-Sanford AK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3309785 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature