RESEARCH ARTICLE
Characterisation of the MutS and MutL Proteins from the Pseudomonas avellanae Mismatch Repair (MMR) System
Lucia Grenga1, Fabio Gervasi2, Luciano Paolozzi1, Marco Scortichini3, Patrizia Ghelardini4, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 45
Last Page: 52
Publisher ID: TOMICROJ-6-45
DOI: 10.2174/1874285801206010045
Article History:
Received Date: 10/1/2012Revision Received Date: 13/2/2012
Acceptance Date: 20/2/2012
Electronic publication date: 25/5/2012
Collection year: 2012

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
The identification and analysis of the Pseudomonas avellanae mismatch repair system (MMR) were performed via sequencing and cloning the mutS and mutL genes and then analyzing the characteristics of the corresponding proteins studying their function and biological role in an E. coli heterologous system. In these studies, the P. avellanae MutS and MutL proteins were shown to localise at the nucleoid level, in a MutS-dependent manner as far as MutL is concerned, and were also able to complement the defect observed in both the mutS and mutL knockout strains of E. coli. In addition, their ability to form both homo and heterodimers between each other was shown by using the prokaryotic two-hybrid assay. Our results represent a first step to elucidate the MMR mechanism in plant pathogenic pseudomonads since the MMR genes were identified in P. syringae pathovars but there was no evidence on their action as effective repair products.