Breaking the Code of DNA Binding Specificity of TAL-Type III Effectors

The pathogenicity of many bacteria depends on the injection of effector proteins via type III secretion into eukaryotic cells in order to manipulate cellular processes. TAL (transcription activator–like) effectors from plant pathogenic Xanthomonas are important virulence factors that act as transcri...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 326; no. 5959; pp. 1509 - 1512
Main Authors:	Boch, Jens, Scholze, Heidi, Schornack, Sebastian, Landgraf, Angelika, Hahn, Simone, Kay, Sabine, Lahaye, Thomas, Nickstadt, Anja, Bonas, Ulla
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Washington, DC American Association for the Advancement of Science 11-12-2009 The American Association for the Advancement of Science
Subjects:	Amino Acid Motifs Amino Acid Sequence Amino acids Arabidopsis - genetics Bacteria Bacterial Proteins - chemistry Bacterial Proteins - metabolism Bacteriology Base Pairing Base Sequence Binding sites Biological and medical sciences Biotechnology Capsicum - genetics Chemical bases Deoxyribonucleic acid DNA DNA, Plant - chemistry DNA, Plant - metabolism DNA-Binding Proteins - chemistry DNA-Binding Proteins - metabolism Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology Genes Genes, Plant Microbiology Microorganisms Models, Biological Molecular Sequence Data Nicotiana - genetics Nucleotide sequences Pathogenicity, virulence, toxins, bacteriocins, pyrogens, host-bacteria relations, miscellaneous strains Peat Plant biology Plant cells Plant pathology Plants Promoter Regions, Genetic Protein Binding Proteins Repetitive Sequences, Amino Acid Transcription Factors - chemistry Transcription Factors - metabolism Transcriptional Activation Virulence factors Xanthomonas Xanthomonas - metabolism Xanthomonas - pathogenicity Pseudomonadales Sequence specificity DNA Virulence Bacteria Pseudomonadaceae Host agent relation Xanthomonas
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	The pathogenicity of many bacteria depends on the injection of effector proteins via type III secretion into eukaryotic cells in order to manipulate cellular processes. TAL (transcription activator–like) effectors from plant pathogenic Xanthomonas are important virulence factors that act as transcriptional activators in the plant cell nucleus, where they directly bind to DNA via a central domain of tandem repeats. Here, we show how target DNA specificity of TAL effectors is encoded. Two hypervariable amino acid residues in each repeat recognize one base pair in the target DNA. Recognition sequences of TAL effectors were predicted and experimentally confirmed. The modular protein architecture enabled the construction of artificial effectors with new specificities. Our study describes the functionality of a distinct type of DNA binding domain and allows the design of DNA binding domains for biotechnology.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-2 ObjectType-Feature-1
ISSN:	0036-8075 1095-9203
DOI:	10.1126/science.1178811