Journal
NATURE MICROBIOLOGY
Volume 2, Issue 11, Pages 1480-1484Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41564-017-0023-4
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Funding
- Public Health Service Grant [GM27099]
- NIH [AI099144, CETR U19 AI109764, R01GM100951]
- American Heart Association [14POST18480014]
- Center for Phage Technology at Texas A&M University - Texas AM AgriLife
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For bacteriophage infections, the cell walls of bacteria, consisting of a single highly polymeric molecule of peptidoglycan (PG), pose a major problem for the release of progeny virions. Phage lysis proteins that overcome this barrier can point the way to new antibacterial strategies(1), especially small lytic single-stranded DNA (the microviruses) and RNA phages (the leviviruses) that effect host lysis using a single non-enzymatic protein(2). Previously, the A(2) protein of levivirus Q beta and the E protein of the microvirus phi X174 were shown to be 'protein antibiotics' that inhibit the MurA and MraY steps of the PG synthesis pathway(2-4). Here, we investigated the mechanism of action of an unrelated lysis protein, Lys(M), of the Escherichia coli levivirus M-5. We show that Lys(M) inhibits the translocation of the final lipid-linked PG precursor called lipid II across the cytoplasmic membrane by interfering with the activity of MurJ. The finding that Lys(M) inhibits a distinct step in the PG synthesis pathway from the A(2) and E proteins indicates that small phages, particularly the single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) leviviruses, have a previously unappreciated capacity for evolving novel inhibitors of PG biogenesis despite their limited coding potential.
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