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Journal of Bacteriology, January 2008, p. 743-746, Vol. 190, No. 2
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01135-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Conservation and Evolutionary Dynamics of the agr Cell-to-Cell Communication System across Firmicutes{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Arthur Wuster* and M. Madan Babu*

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 0QH, United Kingdom

Received 18 July 2007/ Accepted 28 September 2007

We present evidence that the agr cell-to-cell communication system is present across firmicutes, including the human pathogen Clostridium perfringens. Although we find that the agr system is evolutionarily conserved and that the general functions which it regulates are similar in different species, the individual regulated genes are not the same. This suggests that the regulatory network controlled by agr is dynamic and evolves rapidly.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 0QH, United Kingdom. Phone: 44 (01223) 402479. Fax: 44 (01223) 213556. E-mail for Arthur Wuster: awuster{at}mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk. E-mail for M. Madan Babu: madanm{at}mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 12 October 2007.

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

Journal of Bacteriology, January 2008, p. 743-746, Vol. 190, No. 2
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01135-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Ohtani, K., Yuan, Y., Hassan, S., Wang, R., Wang, Y., Shimizu, T. (2009). Virulence Gene Regulation by the agr System in Clostridium perfringens. J. Bacteriol. 191: 3919-3927 [Abstract] [Full Text]  


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