The pathway to resolve dimeric forms distinguishes plasmids from megaplasmids in Enterobacteriaceae.

Bacterial genomes contain a plethora of secondary replicons of divergent size. Circular replicons must carry a system for resolving dimeric forms, resulting from recombination between sister copies. These systems use site-specific recombinases.

Interplay between the Xer recombination system and the dissemination of antibioresistance in Acinetobacter baumannii.

Antibiotic-resistant infections are a pressing clinical challenge. Plasmids are known to accelerate the emergence of resistance by facilitating horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistance genes between bacteria. We explore this question in Acinetobacter baumannii, a globally emerging nosocomial pathogen responsible for a wide range of infections with a worrying accumulation of resistance, particularly involving plasmids.

In vivo assembly of bacterial partition condensates on circular supercoiled and linear DNA.

In bacteria, faithful DNA segregation of chromosomes and plasmids is mainly mediated by ParABS systems. These systems, consisting of a ParA ATPase, a DNA binding ParB CTPase, and centromere sites parS, orchestrate the separation of newly replicated DNA copies and their intracellular positioning. Accurate segregation relies on the assembly of a high-molecular-weight complex, comprising a few hundreds of ParB dimers nucleated from parS sites.

A subclass of the IS1202 family of bacterial insertion sequences targets XerCD recombination sites.

We describe here a new family of IS which are related to IS1202, originally isolated from Streptococcus pneumoniae in the mid-1990s and previously tagged as an emerging IS family in the ISfinder database. Members of this family have impacted some important properties of their hosts. We describe here another potentially important property of certain family members: specific targeting of xrs recombination sites.