Bacteria react to changes in their environment using different strategies, e.g. ribosome hibernation: in this case, the ribosome machinery, which is responsible for translating mRNA into proteins, becomes reversibly inactivated. The group of SFB 1381 PI Hans-Georg Koch (B06) showed with the support of the Z01 project (Friedel Drepper and Pitter Huesgen) that the YqjD/ElaB/YgaM proteins, initially discovered as membrane-bound ribosome binding proteins in E. coli, constitute an abundant class of ribosome-hibernating proteins, which are conserved across all proteobacteria and some other bacterial lineages. The C-tail anchored membrane proteins YqjD/ElaB/YgaM inhibit translation by blocking the ribosomal tunnel and thus mimic the activity of antimicrobial peptides and macrolide antibiotics.
The original publication was published in Structure and can be found here.
Illustration: Hans-Georg Koch.
