Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 116, Issue 10, Pages 4605-4610Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817711116
Keywords
prions; protein-based heredity; SSB; Sup35; Escherichia coli
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Funding
- [GM115941]
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Prions are infectious, self-propagating protein aggregates that are notorious for causing devastating neurodegenerative diseases in mammals. Recent evidence supports the existence of prions in bacteria. However, the evaluation of candidate bacterial prionforming proteins has been hampered by the lack of genetic assays for detecting their conversion to an aggregated prion conformation. Here we describe a bacteria-based genetic assay that distinguishes cells carrying a model yeast prion protein in its nonprion and prion forms. We then use this assay to investigate the prionforming potential of single-stranded DNA-binding protein (SSB) of Campylobacter hominis. Our findings indicate that SSB possesses a prion-forming domain that can transition between nonprion and prion conformations. Furthermore, we show that bacterial cells can propagate the prion form over 100 generations in a manner that depends on the disaggregase ClpB. The bacteria-based genetic tool we present may facilitate the investigation of prionlike phenomena in all domains of life.
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