Disease relevance of rep

• The greatest divergence between these phages occurs in the 5' terminal region of the A gene, while the lysis-replicase gene overlap, the coat gene and the central region of the replicase gene are highly conserved [1].
• The operator hairpin ahead of the replicase gene in RNA bacteriophage MS2 contains overlapping signals for binding the coat protein and ribosomes [2].
• The binding of a coat protein dimer to this hairpin shuts off synthesis of the viral replicase, switching the viral replication cycle to virion assembly rather than continued replication [3].
• In order to identify proteins translated from those ORFs, gene fusions between the N-terminus of the RNA replicase of the Escherichia coli bacteriophage MS2 and selected regions of ORF4 and ORF6 were constructed [4].
• Dimers of the capsid protein repress translation of the replicase gene product by binding to the ribosome binding site and this interaction is believed to initiate RNA encapsidation [5].

High impact information on rep

• In this paper we show that the op3 mutation is a C yield U transition occurring in the second codon of the synthetase cistron, which explains the lowered production of phage replicase (as well as lack of lysis) upon op3 infection of nonpermissive cells [6].
• The coat protein of the RNA bacteriophage MS2 is a specific RNA binding protein that represses translation of the viral replicase gene during the infection cycle [7].
• The regulatory region of phage fr replicase cistron. III. Initiation activity of specific fr RNA fragments [8].
• Analysis of available mutants showed that this fusion results from +1 ribosomal frameshifting at the end of the R reading frame [9].

References