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Updated: Feb 13, 2026

A 1.5 Hour Procedure for Identification of Enterococcus Species Directly from Blood Cultures
Published on: February 10, 2011
DNA-binding properties of MafR, a global regulator of Enterococcus faecalis
Sofía Ruiz-Cruz1, Ana Moreno-Blanco1, Manuel Espinosa1
1Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, Spain.
Abstract:
Global transcriptional regulators play key roles during bacterial adaptation to environmental fluctuations. Protein MafR from Enterococcus faecalis was shown to activate the transcription of many genes on a genome-wide scale. We proposed that MafR is a global regulator of the Mga/AtxA family. Here, we purified an untagged form of the MafR protein and found that it binds to linear double-stranded DNAs in a nonsequence-specific manner. Moreover, multiple MafR units (likely dimers) bind sequentially to the DNA molecule generating multimeric complexes. On DNAs that contain the promoter of the mafR gene, MafR recognizes a potentially curved DNA region. We discuss that a characteristic of the Mga/AtxA regulators might be their ability to recognize particular DNA shapes across the bacterial genomes.
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