Reversible regulation of conjugation of Bacillus subtilis plasmid pLS20 by the quorum sensing peptide responsive anti-repressor RappLS20.

ABSTRACT: Quorum sensing plays crucial roles in bacterial communication including in the process of conjugation, which has large economical and health-related impacts by spreading antibiotic resistance. The conjugative Bacillus subtilis plasmid pLS20 uses quorum sensing to determine when to activate the conjugation genes. The main conjugation promoter, Pc, is by default repressed by a regulator RcopLS20 involving DNA looping. A plasmid-encoded signalling peptide, Phr*pLS20, inactivates the anti-repressor of RcopLS20, named RappLS20, which belongs to the large group of RRNPP family of regulatory proteins. Here we show that DNA looping occurs through interactions between two RcopLS20 tetramers, each bound to an operator site. We determined the relative promoter strengths for all the promoters involved

SUBMITTER: Singh PK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7641744 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature