Bacterial Interference Caused by Autoinducing Peptide Variants

• DOI: 10.1126/science.276.5321.2027
• Publication Date: 2002-07-27T09:45:50Z
• Authors: Guangyong Ji; Ronald Beavis; Richard P. Novick
• Keywords: Staphylococcus aureus; 0303 health sciences; Virulence; Molecular Sequence Data; Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; Mass Spectrometry; 03 medical and health sciences; Bacterial Proteins; Antibiosis; Trans-Activators; Amino Acid Sequence; Cloning, Molecular; Peptides; Promoter Regions, Genetic; Dimerization; Signal Transduction; Transcription Factors

The synthesis of virulence factors and other extracellular proteins by Staphylococcus aureus is globally controlled by the agr locus, which encodes a two-component signaling pathway whose activating ligand is an agr -encoded autoinducing peptide. The cognate peptides produced by some strains inhibit the expression of agr in other strains, and the amino acid sequences of peptide and receptor are markedly different between such strains, suggesting a hypervariability-generating mechanism. Cross-inhibition of gene expression represents a type of bacterial interference that could be correlated with the ability of one strain to exclude others from infection or colonization sites, or both.