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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Simone PelliciariORCiD, Professor Heath MurrayORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2021 The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.Genome replication is a fundamental requirement for the proliferation of all cells. Throughout the domains of life, conserved DNA replication initiation proteins assemble at specific chromosomal loci termed replication origins and direct loading of replicative helicases (1). Despite decades of study on bacterial replication, the diversity of bacterial chromosome origin architecture has confounded the search for molecular mechanisms directing the initiation process. Recently a basal system for opening a bacterial chromosome origin (oriC) was proposed (2). In the model organism Bacillus subtilis, a pair of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) binding sites (DnaA-boxes) guide the replication initiator DnaA onto adjacent single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) binding motifs (DnaA-Trios) where the protein assembles into an oligomer that stretches DNA to promote origin unwinding. We report here that these core elements are predicted to be present in the majority of bacterial chromosome origins. Moreover, we find that the principle activities of the origin unwinding system are conserved in vitro and in vivo. The results suggest that this basal mechanism for oriC unwinding is broadly functionally conserved and therefore may represent an ancestral system to open bacterial chromosome origins.
Author(s): Pelliciari S, Dong M-J, Gao F, Murray H
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Nucleic Acids Research
Year: 2021
Volume: 49
Issue: 13
Pages: 7525-7536
Print publication date: 21/07/2021
Online publication date: 01/07/2021
Acceptance date: 14/06/2021
Date deposited: 25/08/2021
ISSN (print): 0305-1048
ISSN (electronic): 1362-4962
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkab560
DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkab560
PubMed id: 34197592
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