Abstract

Although toxin-antitoxin gene cassettes were first found in plasmids, recent database mining has shown that these loci are abundant in free-living prokaryotes, including many pathogenic bacteria. For example, Mycobacterium tuberculosis has 38 chromosomal toxin-antitoxin loci, including 3 relBE and 9 mazEF loci. RelE and MazF are toxins that cleave mRNA in response to nutritional stress. RelE cleaves mRNAs that are positioned at the ribosomal A-site, between the second and third nucleotides of the A-site codon. It has been proposed that toxin-antitoxin loci function in bacterial programmed cell death, but evidence now indicates that these loci provide a control mechanism that helps free-living prokaryotes cope with nutritional stress.

Keywords

AntitoxinBiologyPlasmidGeneToxinGeneticsMicrobiologyBacteria

MeSH Terms

AntitoxinsApoptosisBacteriaBacterial ToxinsChromosome MappingChromosomesBacterialMycobacterium tuberculosisOperonPlasmidsRNAMessenger

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Publication Info

Year
2005
Type
review
Volume
3
Issue
5
Pages
371-382
Citations
1008
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Kenn Gerdes, Susanne K. Christensen, Anders Løbner‐Olesen (2005). Prokaryotic toxin–antitoxin stress response loci. Nature Reviews Microbiology , 3 (5) , 371-382. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1147

Identifiers

DOI
10.1038/nrmicro1147
PMID
15864262

Data Quality

Data completeness: 81%