Brief Communication abstract
Nature Chemical Biology 3, 709 - 710 (2007)
Published online: 14 October 2007 | doi:10.1038/nchembio.2007.39
Phosphorothioation of DNA in bacteria by dnd genes
Lianrong Wang1,2,5, Shi Chen1,3,5, Tiegang Xu1, Koli Taghizadeh4, John S Wishnok2,4, Xiufen Zhou1, Delin You1, Zixin Deng1 & Peter C Dedon2,4
Modifications of the canonical structures of DNA and RNA play critical roles in cell physiology, DNA replication, transcription and translation in all organisms. We now report that bacterial dnd gene clusters incorporate sulfur into the DNA backbone as a sequence-selective, stereospecific phosphorothioate modification. To our knowledge, unlike any other DNA or RNA modification systems, DNA phosphorothioation by dnd gene clusters is the first physiological modification described on the DNA backbone.
- Laboratory of Microbial Metabolism and School of Life Science & Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, 1954 Huashan Road, Shanghai 200030, China.
- Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
- Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
- MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
- These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence to: Peter C Dedon2,4 e-mail: pcdedon@mit.edu
Correspondence to: Zixin Deng1 e-mail: zxdeng@sjtu.edu.cn
MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS
These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.
NEWS AND VIEWS
Phosphorothioation of DNA in bacteriaNature Chemical Biology News and Views (01 Nov 2007)
RESEARCH
Isolation of high-affinity ligand-binding proteins by periplasmic expression with cytometric screening (PECS)Nature Biotechnology Research (01 Jun 2001)
