Ji G, Beavis R, Novick R P
Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, New York University Medical Center, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Science. 1997 Jun 27;276(5321):2027-30. doi: 10.1126/science.276.5321.2027.
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.
金黄色葡萄球菌毒力因子和其他细胞外蛋白的合成受agr位点全局调控，该位点编码一种双组分信号通路，其激活配体是一种由agr编码的自诱导肽。一些菌株产生的同源肽可抑制其他菌株中agr的表达，且此类菌株间肽和受体的氨基酸序列明显不同，提示存在一种产生高变异性的机制。基因表达的交叉抑制代表了一种细菌干扰类型，可能与一个菌株将其他菌株排除在感染或定植位点之外的能力相关，或与这两种能力均相关。
