Nature Communications (Nov 2018)

Structural basis for the recognition of sulfur in phosphorothioated DNA

  • Guang Liu,
  • Wencheng Fu,
  • Zhenyi Zhang,
  • Yao He,
  • Hao Yu,
  • Yuli Wang,
  • Xiaolei Wang,
  • Yi-Lei Zhao,
  • Zixin Deng,
  • Geng Wu,
  • Xinyi He

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-07093-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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DNA phosphorothioation (PT-DNA) is a DNA backbone sulfur modification that is recognized by the type-IV restriction endonuclease ScoMcrA. Here the authors provide insights into sulfur recognition by solving the crystal structure of the PT-DNA bound sulfur-binding domain (SBD) from ScoMcrA and they further show that SBD homologs are widely spread among prokaryotes.