Why so narrow: Distribution of anti-sense regulated, type I toxin-antitoxin systems compared with type II and type III systems. Issue 3 (4th March 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Coray, Dorien S.; Wheeler, Nicole E.; Heinemann, Jack A.; Gardner, Paul P.
• Is Part Of: RNA biology. Volume 14:Issue 3(2017)
• Page Start: 275
• Page End: 280
• Publication Date: 2017-03-04
• Subjects: Antisense RNA -- horizontal gene transfer -- post-segregational killing -- toxin-antitoxin systems; RNA -- Periodicals; Molecular biology -- Periodicals; Molecular biology; RNA; Periodicals; 572.8805
• DOI: 10.1080/15476286.2016.1272747
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1547-6286

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are gene modules that appear to be horizontally mobile across a wide range of prokaryotes. It has been proposed that type I TA systems, with an antisense RNA-antitoxin, are less mobile than other TAs that rely on direct toxin-antitoxin binding but no direct comparisons have been made. We searched for type I, II and III toxin families using iterative searches with profile hidden Markov models across phyla and replicons. The distribution of type I toxin families were comparatively narrow, but these patterns weakened with recently discovered families. We discuss how the function and phenotypes of TA systems as well as biases in our search methods may account for differences in their distribution.