ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Convergent transcription confers a bistable switch in Enterococcus faecalis conjugation.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 95 citations in OpenAlex.
- Antisense RNA controls the degradation of phycobilisomes in heterocyst-forming cyanobacteria by a transcriptional interference mechanism.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- A newly discoveredFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Comparative analysis of convergent and divergent T7 RNA polymerase promoters for the synthesis of dsRNA in vivo and in vitro.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Using stochastic cellular automata to model and define sufficient conditions for the survival of Enterococcus faecalis biofilms with the pCF10 plasmid under erythromycin treatment.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Insights into ecology, pathogenesis, and biofilm formation ofMicrobiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR · 2025Review
- Transcriptome analysis ofmBio · 2024Article
- Improved RNA stability estimation indicates that transcriptional interference is frequent in diverse bacteria.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Structural Differences in Complexes between the Master Regulator PrgX, Peptide Pheromones, and Operator Binding Sites Determine the Induction State for Conjugative Transfer of pCF10.Journal of bacteriology · 2022Article
- Article
- Two ABC transport systems carry out peptide uptake in Enterococcus faecalis: Their roles in growth and in uptake of sex pheromones.Molecular microbiology · 2021Article
- Identification of the cross-strand chimeric RNAs generated by fusions of bi-directional transcripts.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Comparative transcriptomic analysis of Rickettsia conorii during in vitro infection of human and tick host cells.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Ratiometric quorum sensing governs the trade-off between bacterial vertical and horizontal antibiotic resistance propagation.PLoS biology · 2020Article
- Single-Cell Analysis Reveals that the Enterococcal Sex Pheromone Response Results in Expression of Full-Length Conjugation Operon Transcripts in All Induced Cells.Journal of bacteriology · 2020Article
- Exposure to One Antibiotic Leads to Acquisition of Resistance to Another AntibioticFrontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Effects of endogenous levels of master regulator PrgX and peptide pheromones on inducibility of conjugation in the enterococcal pCF10 system.Molecular microbiology · 2019Article
- The Reaction of Dimerization by Itself Reduces the Noise Intensity of the Protein Monomer.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Enterococcal Genetics.Microbiology spectrum · 2019Review
- Surface Exclusion Revisited: Function Related to Differential Expression of the Surface Exclusion System ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2019Article
- Mechanistic Features of the Enterococcal pCF10 Sex Pheromone Response and the Biology of Enterococcus faecalis in Its Natural Habitat.Journal of bacteriology · 2018Review
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Convergent gene pairs with head-to-head configurations are widespread in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes and are speculated to be involved in gene regulation. Here we present a unique mechanism of gene regulation due to convergent transcription from the antagonistic prgX/prgQ operon in Enterococcus faecalis controlling conjugative transfer of the antibiotic resistance plasmid pCF10 from donor cells to recipient cells. Using mathematical modeling and experimentation, we demonstrate that convergent transcription in the prgX/prgQ operon endows the system with the properties of a robust genetic switch through premature termination of elongating transcripts due to collisions between RNA polymerases (RNAPs) transcribing from opposite directions and antisense regulation between complementary counter-transcripts. Evidence is provided for the presence of truncated RNAs resulting from convergent transcription from both the promoters that are capable of sense-antisense interactions. A mathematical model predicts that both RNAP collision and antisense regulation are essential for a robust bistable switch behavior in the control of conjugation initiation by prgX/prgQ operons. Moreover, given that convergent transcription is conserved across species, the mechanism of coupling RNAP collision and antisense interaction is likely to have a significant regulatory role in gene expression.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.