Disease relevance of fusA

• The nucleotide sequence of the Escherichia coli fus gene, coding for elongation factor G [1].
• These phages carry regions of the bacterial chromosome between aroE and fus [2].
• An exceptional disposition of the elongation factor genes is observed in Rickettsia prowazekii, in which there is only one tuf gene, which is distant from the lone fus gene [3].
• In contrast, the closely related bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens has the normal bacterial arrangement of two tuf genes, of which one is tightly linked to the fus gene [3].

High impact information on fusA

• We have previously identified 20 different fusidic acid-resistant alleles of fusA, encoding mutant forms of the ribosomal translocase EF-G [4].
• The mutations conferred cross-resistance to fusidic acid and mapped in fusA, the gene encoding elongation factor G. Cross-resistance between cephalosporin P1 and fusidic acid also occurred for S. aureus fusA mutants selected with fusidic acid, and in fusidic acid-resistant clinical isolates [5].
• In contrast, mutations in 10 mutants selected with cephalosporin P1 were all located in fusA [5].
• The removal of an EcoRI fragment that lies within fus destroyed the ability of the 2,000-base-pair PstI-SmaI fragment to promote the transcription of tet [6].
• This region is almost certainly equivalent to the rif locus, located near to fus at interval 12/13 on the S. aureus linkage map [7].

Biological context of fusA

• Measurements of transcription rates from various regions of the str operon in cells carrying the fus gene and the beginning of the tufA gene on a high copy number plasmid confirmed that transcription was initiated within a 600 bp EcoRI fragment in the distal portion of the fus gene [8].

References