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Journal of Bacteriology, June 2008, p. 4218-4224, Vol. 190, No. 12
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01848-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Repair and Antirepair DNA Helicases in Helicobacter pylori{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Josephine Kang* and Martin J. Blaser

Departments of Microbiology and Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, and VA Medical Center, New York, New York

Received 23 November 2007/ Accepted 20 March 2008

Orthologs of RecG and RuvABC are highly conserved among prokaryotes; in Escherichia coli, they participate in independent pathways that branch migrate Holliday junctions during recombinational DNA repair. RecG also has been shown to directly convert stalled replication forks into Holliday junctions. The bacterium Helicobacter pylori, with remarkably high levels of recombination, possesses RecG and RuvABC homologs, but in contrast to E. coli, H. pylori RecG limits recombinational repair. We now show that the RuvABC pathway plays the prominent, if not exclusive, repair role. By introducing an E. coli resolvase (RusA) into H. pylori, the repair and recombination phenotypes of the ruvB mutant but not the recG mutant were improved. Our results indicate that RecG and RuvB compete for Holliday junction structures in recombinational repair, but since a classic RecG resolvase is absent from H. pylori, deployment of the RecG pathway is lethal. We propose that evolutionary loss of the H. pylori RecG resolvase provides an "antirepair" pathway allowing for selection of varied strains. Such competition between repair and antirepair provides a novel mechanism to maximize fitness at a bacterial population level.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, 550 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Phone: (212) 263-4105. Fax: (212) 263-7700. E-mail: kangm01{at}med.nyu.edu

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 28 March 2008.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jb.asm.org/.

Journal of Bacteriology, June 2008, p. 4218-4224, Vol. 190, No. 12
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01848-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Shak, J. R., Dick, J. J., Meinersmann, R. J., Perez-Perez, G. I., Blaser, M. J. (2009). Repeat-Associated Plasticity in the Helicobacter pylori RD Gene Family. J. Bacteriol. 191: 6900-6910 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
  • Castellanos, M., Romero, D. (2009). The Extent of Migration of the Holliday Junction Is a Crucial Factor for Gene Conversion in Rhizobium etli. J. Bacteriol. 191: 4987-4995 [Abstract] [Full Text]  


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