Wise K S
Dept of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia 65212.
Trends Microbiol. 1993 May;1(2):59-63. doi: 10.1016/0966-842x(93)90034-o.
Mycoplasmas excel as infectious agents, despite their very small genomes. In one mycoplasma species, adaptive flexibility is enhanced by an elegant genetic system that diversifies the membrane surface through a set of variable lipoproteins (Vlps). A family of vlp genes supplies divergent coding sequences and undergoes high-frequency mutations, thus creating large repertoires of surface mosaics and structural variants.
支原体尽管基因组非常小,但作为感染因子却表现出色。在一种支原体物种中,一种精妙的遗传系统增强了其适应性灵活性,该系统通过一组可变脂蛋白(Vlps)使膜表面多样化。一个vlp基因家族提供不同的编码序列并经历高频突变,从而产生大量的表面镶嵌体和结构变体。