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Escherichia coli mazEF-Mediated Cell Death Is Triggered by Various Stressful Conditions

Ronen Hazan, Boaz Sat, and Hanna Engelberg-Kulka^*

Department of Molecular Biology, The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem 91120, Israel

Received 7 November 2003/ Accepted 23 February 2004

mazEF is an Escherichia coli suicide module specific for a stable toxin and a labile antitoxin. Inhibiting mazEF expression appeared to activate the module to cause cell death. Here we show that several stressful conditions, including high temperatures, DNA damage, and oxidative stress, also induce mazEF-mediated cell death. We also show that this process takes place only during logarithmic growth and requires an intact relA gene.

R.H. and B.S. contributed equally to this work.

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