Funcionalidade das proteínas ParA e ParB na segregação cromossômica de Xanthomonas citri ssp citri

• Ano de defesa: 2014
• Autor(a) principal: Ucci, Amanda Piovesan [UNESP]
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp)
• Palavras-chave em Português: Bacterias fitopatogenicas; Cancro citrico; Xanthomonas campestris; Cromossomos vegetais
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/11449/108498

The bacterium Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri (Xac) is the causal agent of citrus canker, a severe disease that affects citrus plants worldwide. An effective control for the citrus canker is not available yet, and the elimination of infected plants continues to be the recommended practice to control the disease. Although the genome sequence of Xac has been available for almost a decade, its biology is not well known and there is a lack in the literature of studies concerning chromosome segregation and cell division of this plant pathogen. Chromosome segregation is an essential process to all living cells. This process involves a precise replication and partitioning of the chromosome in order to obtain a faithful transmission of hereditary information to the daughter cells. These mechanisms have been extensively characterized in eukaryotes but are still not well understood in prokaryotes. However, recent reports have shown that bacteria have a mitotic-like system in which the parS sequence is bound by ParB and pulled by ParA during chromosome segregation. In this work it was identified and characterized an active ParAB/parS system in the Xac plant pathogen. Several molecular and cytological evidence indicate that ParAB/parS is involved in chromosome partitioning in Xac: i) ParB-GFP localizes into a single cluster at the edges of the nucleoid, as shown for other ParB-like factors; ii) ParB can interact with parS binding sites in vitro and in vivo through a nucleation mechanism followed by lateral spreading, suggesting the formation of a ParB/parS centromerelike complex; iii) ParB/parS dymanic suggests an asymmetric model of chromosome segregation; iv) whereas the overexpression of both ParA and ParB does not cause any cell morphology defect, a parB mutation renders cells filamentous and often anucleate, which suggests impaired chromosome segregation and/or cell division; v) ParB-GFP and ZapA-mCherry (marker for the Z-ring) localization ...