Voyage of RepA protein from plasmid DNA replication through amyloid aggregation towards synthetic biology

SummaryDNA replication of plasmids in Gram-negative bacteria has been an object of study at CIB-CSIC for nearly 30 years. We have been focused on the enterobacterial antibiotic resistance factor R1 (1981–1992) and the pPS10 replicon from the phytopathogen Pseudomonas savastanoi (since 1984). Our group has used multidisciplinary (genetic, biochemical and biophysical-structural) approaches to unravel the molecular mechanism for the activation of RepA. Rep-type plasmidic proteins are either transcriptional repressors or replication initiators/inhibitors, depending on their association state (dimers vs. monomers) and targeting of alternative (operator or iteron) DNA sites. We discovered that allosteric DNA-binding remodels the structure of RepA N-terminal domain (WH1), transforming α-helical portions into β-strands. This precisely tunes the distances between the DNA reading heads in WH1 and the C-terminal domain (WH2), to match the target operator or iteron sequences. We have recently moved into engineering such structural transformation in RepA-WH1 to build-up synthetic protein devices that allow for customized ligand (DNA)-promoted amyloidogenesis. Our basic studies on plasmid DNA replication are relevant for settling the bases of a minimalist bacterial model to tackle transmissible amyloid proteinopathies and are a valuable tool for bottom-up synthetic biology.