An abundance of bacterial ADP-ribosyltransferases - implications for the origin of exotoxins and their human homologues

ADP-ribosylation is a post-translational modification that can be seen in many contexts, including as the primary mechanism of action of many important bacterial exotoxins, By data-mining complete and incomplete bacterial genome sequences, we have discovered > 20 novel putative ADP-ribosyltransferases. including several new potential toxins.