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Volume 170, Issue 9

Microbial Primer: Phase variation - survival and adaptability by generation of a diverse population Open Access

This article is part of the Microbial Primers collection.

Abstract

Phase variation is defined as the rapid and reversible switching of gene expression, and typically occurs in genes encoding surface features in small genome bacterial pathogens. Phase variation has evolved to provide an extra survival mechanism in bacteria that lack multiple ‘sense-and-respond’ gene regulation systems. Many bacterial pathogens also encode DNA methyltransferases that are phase-variable, controlling systems called ‘phasevarions’ (phase-variable regulons). This primer will summarize the current understanding of phase variation, describing the role of major phase-variable factors, and phasevarions, in bacterial pathobiology.

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Keyword(s): contingency/survival strategy , inverted repeats , phase variation , phasevarion and simple sequence repeats
© 2024 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2024-09-02
2024-09-18
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/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001492
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Microbial Primer: Phase variation - survival and adaptability by generation of a diverse population
Microbiology 170, 001492 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001492
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001492
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001492
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