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J. Bacteriol. doi:10.1128/JB.00403-07
Copyright (c) 2007, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

An antibiotic-inducible cell-wall associated protein that protects Bacillus subtilis from autolysis

Department of Microbiology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-8101, USA

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: jdh9{at}cornell.edu.

	Abstract

In Bacillus subtilis, antibiotics that impair cell wall synthesis induce a characteristic stress response including the ^W and ^M regulons and the previously uncharacterized yoeB gene. Here, we demonstrate that YoeB is a cell wall-associated protein with weak sequence similarity to a non-catalytic domain of Class B penicillin-binding proteins. A null mutant of yoeB exhibits an increased rate of autolysis in response to cell wall targeting antibiotics or nutrient depletion. This phenotype does not appear to be correlated with gross alterations in peptidoglycan structure or levels of autolysins. Promoter dissection experiments define a minimal region necessary for antibiotic-mediated induction of yoeB, and this region is highly conserved preceding yoeB homologs in close relatives of B. subtilis. These results support a model in which induction of YoeB in response to cell envelope stress decreases the activity of autolysins and thereby reduces the rate of antibiotic-dependent cell death.

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