Poster abstracts
Poster number 34 submitted by Yaowen Deng
Agrobacterium fabrum ribosomes with different S21 paralogs are important for the regulation of protein synthesis
Yaowen Deng (Department of Physics), Annie Urban (Department of Microbiology), Ralf Bundschuh (Department of Physics), Kurt Fredrick
Abstract:
Agrobacterium fabrum is a soil-borne bacterium that induces the formation of crown gall tumors in plants and is widely used for its unique ability to transfer genetic material into plant cells. One unique feature of Agrobacterium and its relatives, compared to most other bacteria, is that they encode multiple paralogs of ribosomal protein S21. The relative expression levels of those paralogous S21 genes change in response to the environment, suggesting functional relevance. We performed ribosome profiling (ribo-seq and RNA-seq) to characterize translation efficiency for individual genes in isogenic strains that each express only one of the three S21 paralogs. We discovered that ribosomes with one of these S21 paralogs nearly abolish translation of a subset of genes, mainly on plasmid At. This confirms the suspected functional relevance of the presence of multiple paralogs and is likely a way to regulate bacterial conjugation.
Keywords: Bacterial Ribosomes, S21 protein, Translation Regulation