NUS Graduate school For Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Singapore 119077.
Sci Rep. 2012;2:509. doi: 10.1038/srep00509. Epub 2012 Jul 13.
H-NS is an abundant nucleoid-associated protein in bacteria that globally silences genes, including horizontally-acquired genes related to pathogenesis. Although it has been shown that H-NS has multiple modes of DNA-binding, which mode is employed in gene silencing is still unclear. Here, we report that in H-NS mutants that are unable to silence genes, are unable to form a rigid H-NS nucleoprotein filament. These results indicate that the H-NS nucleoprotein filament is crucial for its gene silencing function, and serves as the fundamental structural basis for gene silencing by H-NS and likely other H-NS-like bacterial proteins.
H-NS 是细菌中丰富的核蛋白相关蛋白，可全局沉默基因，包括与发病机制相关的水平获得基因。尽管已经表明 H-NS 具有多种 DNA 结合模式，但在基因沉默中采用哪种模式仍不清楚。在这里，我们报告说，在无法沉默基因的 H-NS 突变体中，无法形成刚性的 H-NS 核蛋白丝。这些结果表明 H-NS 核蛋白丝对于其基因沉默功能至关重要，并且是 H-NS 和可能其他 H-NS 样细菌蛋白进行基因沉默的基本结构基础。
