ArticlePLoS genetics2011
Role of the single-stranded DNA-binding protein SsbB in pneumococcal transformation: maintenance of a reservoir for genetic plasticity.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers.
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66 citing papers in PubMed, 115 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Chromosomal Curing Drives an Arms Race Between Bacterial Transformation and Prophage.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Molecular interplay between ComEC domains allows for selective degradation of the non-translocating strand during natural transformation.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Surviving the storm: exploring the role of natural transformation in nutrition and DNA repair of stressedApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Naturally competent bacteria and their genetic parasites-a battle for control over horizontal gene transfer?FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
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- Klebsiella pneumoniae peptide hijacks a Streptococcus pneumoniae permease to subvert pneumococcal growth and colonization.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Natural transformation-specific DprA coordinate DNA double-strand break repair pathways in heavily irradiatedApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- Fever-like temperature bursts promote competence development via an HtrA-dependent pathway in Streptococcus pneumoniae.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
- DNA modifications impact natural transformation of Acinetobacter baumannii.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
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- Airway proteolytic control of pneumococcal competence.PLoS pathogens · 2023Article
- Assembly mechanism and cryoEM structure of RecA recombination nucleofilaments from Streptococcus pneumoniae.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
- The RecA-directed recombination pathway of natural transformation initiates at chromosomal replication forks in the pneumococcus.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Expanding natural transformation to improve beneficial lactic acid bacteria.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2022Article
- The acquisition of clinically relevant amoxicillin resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae requires ordered horizontal gene transfer of four loci.PLoS pathogens · 2022Article
- The molecular basis of FimT-mediated DNA uptake during bacterial natural transformation.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Transposon Insertion Sequencing in a Clinical Isolate of Legionella pneumophila Identifies Essential Genes and Determinants of Natural Transformation.Journal of bacteriology · 2021Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bacteria encode a single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) binding protein (SSB) crucial for genome maintenance. In Bacillus subtilis and Streptococcus pneumoniae, an alternative SSB, SsbB, is expressed uniquely during competence for genetic transformation, but its precise role has been disappointingly obscure. Here, we report our investigations involving comparison of a null mutant (ssbB(-)) and a C-ter truncation (ssbBΔ7) of SsbB of S. pneumoniae, the latter constructed because SSBs' acidic tail has emerged as a key site for interactions with partner proteins. We provide evidence that SsbB directly protects internalized ssDNA. We show that SsbB is highly abundant, potentially allowing the binding of ~1.15 Mb ssDNA (half a genome equivalent); that it participates in the processing of ssDNA into recombinants; and that, at high DNA concentration, it is of crucial importance for chromosomal transformation whilst antagonizing plasmid transformation. While the latter observation explains a long-standing observation that plasmid transformation is very inefficient in S. pneumoniae (compared to chromosomal transformation), the former supports our previous suggestion that SsbB creates a reservoir of ssDNA, allowing successive recombination cycles. SsbBΔ7 fulfils the reservoir function, suggesting that SsbB C-ter is not necessary for processing protein(s) to access stored ssDNA. We propose that the evolutionary raison d'être of SsbB and its abundance is maintenance of this reservoir, which contributes to the genetic plasticity of S. pneumoniae by increasing the likelihood of multiple transformation events in the same cell.
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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.