Affiliations 

  • 1 Centre for Research in Biotechnology for Agriculture (CEBAR) and Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. afung87@gmail.com
  • 2 Biomedical Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Medical Campus, 20400, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. chewchieng@gmail.com
  • 3 Centre for Research in Biotechnology for Agriculture (CEBAR) and Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. jennihari@um.edu.my
BMC Biotechnol, 2015;15:26.
PMID: 25887501 DOI: 10.1186/s12896-015-0138-8

Abstract

Bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems usually comprise of a pair of genes encoding a stable toxin and its cognate labile antitoxin and are located in the chromosome or in plasmids of several bacterial species. Chromosomally-encoded toxin-antitoxin systems are involved in bacterial stress responses and activation of the toxins usually leads to cell death or dormancy. Overexpression of the chromosomally-encoded YoeB toxin from the yefM-yoeB toxin-antitoxin locus of the Gram-positive bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae has been shown to cause cell death in S. pneumoniae as well as E. coli.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.