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Secretion and assembly of functional mini-cellulosomes from synthetic chromosomal operons in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824 (2013)
Journal Article
Kovacs, K., Willson, B. J., Schwarz, K., Heap, J. T., Jackson, A., Bolam, D. N., …Minton, N. P. (2013). Secretion and assembly of functional mini-cellulosomes from synthetic chromosomal operons in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824. Biotechnology for Biofuels, 6(117), https://doi.org/10.1186/1754-6834-6-117

BACKGROUND: Consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) is reliant on the simultaneous enzyme production, saccharification of biomass, and fermentation of released sugars into valuable products such as butanol. Clostridial species that produce butanol are, h... Read More about Secretion and assembly of functional mini-cellulosomes from synthetic chromosomal operons in Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824.

The putative influence of the agr operon upon survival mechanisms used by Clostridium acetobutylicum (2013)
Journal Article
Jabbari, S., Steiner, E., Heap, J. T., Winzer, K., Minton, N. P., & King, J. R. (2013). The putative influence of the agr operon upon survival mechanisms used by Clostridium acetobutylicum. Mathematical Biosciences, 243(2), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mbs.2013.03.005

The bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum produces acids as an energy-yielding process during exponential growth. An acidic environment, however, is toxic to the cells and two survival mechanisms are in place to prevent them from dying. Firstly, durin... Read More about The putative influence of the agr operon upon survival mechanisms used by Clostridium acetobutylicum.

Integration of DNA into bacterial chromosomes from plasmids without a counter-selection marker (2012)
Journal Article
Heap, J. T., Ehsaan, M., Cooksley, C. M., Ng, Y., Cartman, S. T., Winzer, K., & Minton, N. P. (2012). Integration of DNA into bacterial chromosomes from plasmids without a counter-selection marker. Nucleic Acids Research, 40(8), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkr1321

Most bacteria can only be transformed with circular plasmids, so robust DNA integration methods for these rely upon selection of single-crossover clones followed by counter-selection of double-crossover clones. To overcome the limited availability of... Read More about Integration of DNA into bacterial chromosomes from plasmids without a counter-selection marker.

Regulation of neurotoxin production and sporulation by a putative agrBD signaling system in proteolytic Clostridium botulinum (2010)
Journal Article
Cooksley, C. M., Davis, I. J., Winzer, K., Chan, W. C., Peck, M. W., & Minton, N. P. (2010). Regulation of neurotoxin production and sporulation by a putative agrBD signaling system in proteolytic Clostridium botulinum. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 76(13), 4448-4460. https://doi.org/10.1128/AEM.03038-09

A significant number of genome sequences of Clostridium botulinum and related species have now been determined. In silico analysis of these data revealed the presence of two distinct agr loci (agr-1 and agr-2) in all group I strains, each encoding pu... Read More about Regulation of neurotoxin production and sporulation by a putative agrBD signaling system in proteolytic Clostridium botulinum.

Differential Recognition of Staphylococcus aureus Quorum-Sensing Signals Depends on Both Extracellular Loops 1 and 2 of the Transmembrane Sensor AgrC (2008)
Journal Article
Jensen, R. O., Winzer, K., Clarke, S. R., Chan, W. C., & Williams, P. (2008). Differential Recognition of Staphylococcus aureus Quorum-Sensing Signals Depends on Both Extracellular Loops 1 and 2 of the Transmembrane Sensor AgrC. Journal of Molecular Biology, 381(2), 300-309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2008.06.018

Virulence in Staphylococcus aureus is regulated via agr-dependent quorum sensing in which an autoinducing peptide (AIP) activates AgrC, a histidine protein kinase. AIPs are usually thiolactones containing seven to nine amino acid residues in which th... Read More about Differential Recognition of Staphylococcus aureus Quorum-Sensing Signals Depends on Both Extracellular Loops 1 and 2 of the Transmembrane Sensor AgrC.

Look who's talking: Communication and quorum sensing in the bacterial world (2007)
Journal Article
Williams, P., Winzer, K., Chan, W. C., & Cámara, M. (2007). Look who's talking: Communication and quorum sensing in the bacterial world. Philosophical Transactions B: Biological Sciences, 362(1483), 1119-1134. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2007.2039

For many years bacteria were considered primarily as autonomous unicellular organisms with little capacity for collective behaviour. However, we now appreciate that bacterial cells are in fact, highly communicative. The generic term 'quorum sensing'... Read More about Look who's talking: Communication and quorum sensing in the bacterial world.

Density-dependent fitness benefits in quorum-sensing bacterial populations
Journal Article
Darch, S. E., West, S. A., Winzer, K., & Diggle, S. P. Density-dependent fitness benefits in quorum-sensing bacterial populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(21), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118131109

It has been argued that bacteria communicate using small diffusible signal molecules to coordinate, among other things, the production of factors that are secreted outside of the cells in a process known as quorum sensing (QS). The underlying assumpt... Read More about Density-dependent fitness benefits in quorum-sensing bacterial populations.