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Adaptive surface variation in mycoplasmas
1Dept of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of Missouri, Columbia 65212.
Trends in Microbiology
|May 1, 1993
Abstract:
Mycoplasmas excel as infectious agents, despite their very small genomes. In one mycoplasma species, adaptive flexibility is enhanced by an elegant genetic system that diversifies the membrane surface through a set of variable lipoproteins (Vlps). A family of vlp genes supplies divergent coding sequences and undergoes high-frequency mutations, thus creating large repertoires of surface mosaics and structural variants.