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Review
. 2009 Mar;5(3):e1000418.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000418. Epub 2009 Mar 13.

Life, death, differentiation, and the multicellularity of bacteria

Affiliations
Review

Life, death, differentiation, and the multicellularity of bacteria

Susan M Rosenberg. PLoS Genet. 2009 Mar.
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. MazF RNase toxin promotes loss of most proteins but selective increase of some small proteins with functions in the MazEF death-and-survival program.
When MazF RNase is unmasked by the loss of MazE antitoxin, which binds and inactivates MazF, most cellular mRNAs are degraded, and rapid loss of most proteins occurs. Some mRNAs are protected, and Amitai et al. show that some small (less than 20 kDa) proteins are increased in abundance. Some of these proteins promote the death of most of the cells in the population, whereas others promote the survival of a small cell subpopulation in the MazEF death-and-survival program.

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