Discovery of new type I toxin-antitoxin systems adjacent to CRISPR arrays in Clostridium difficile.

ABSTRACT: Clostridium difficile, a major human enteropathogen, must cope with foreign DNA invaders and multiple stress factors inside the host. We have recently provided an experimental evidence of defensive function of the C. difficile CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)-Cas (CRISPR-associated) system important for its survival within phage-rich gut communities. Here, we describe the identification of type I toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems with the first functional antisense RNAs in this pathogen. Through the analysis of deep-sequencing data, we demonstrate the general co-localization with CRISPR arrays for the majority of sequenced C. difficile strains. We provide a detailed characterization of the overlapping convergent transcripts for three selected TA pairs. The toxi

SUBMITTER: Maikova A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5961336 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature