Construction and characterization of a Borrelia burgdorferi strain with conditional expression of the essential telomere resolvase, ResT.

ABSTRACT: Borrelia species are unique in the bacterial world in possessing segmented genomes which sometimes contain over 20 genetic elements. Most elements are linear and contain covalently closed hairpin ends requiring a specialized process, telomere resolution, for their generation. Hairpin telomere resolution is mediated by the telomere resolvase, ResT. Although the process has been studied extensively in vitro, the essential nature of the resT gene has precluded biological studies to further probe the role of ResT. In this work, we have generated a B. burgdorferi strain that carries an isopropyl-β-d-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG)-inducible resT gene controlled by a tightly regulated promoter. ResT is expressed in this strain at ~14,000 monomers per cell, similar to the ~15,000 monomers observed f

SUBMITTER: Bandy NJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4054159 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature