<scp><i>R</i></scp><i>hodobacter capsulatus</i> <scp>DprA</scp> is essential for <scp>RecA</scp>‐mediated gene transfer agent (<scp>RcGTA</scp>) recipient capability regulated by quorum‐sensing and the <scp>CtrA</scp> response regulator
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Gene transfer agents (GTAs) are genetic exchange elements that resemble small DNA bacteriophages that transfer random pieces of the producing cell's genome to recipient cells. The best-studied GTA is that of Rhodobacter capsulatus, termed RcGTA. We discovered that the putative response regulator CtrA, which is essential for RcGTA production, is required for RcGTA-mediated gene acquisition, and confirmed that a RecA homologue is required. It was also discovered that a DprA (DNA-protecting protein A) homologue is essential for RcGTA-mediated gene acquisition, and that dprA expression is induced by gtaI-dependent quorum-sensing and non-phosphorylated CtrA. Modelling of the R. capsulatus DprA structure indicated the presence of a C-terminal region that resembles a dsDNA-binding protein domain. Purified His-tagged R. capsulatus DprA protein bound to both single-stranded (ss)DNA and double-stranded (ds)DNA, but with a greater affinity for ssDNA. Additionally, DprA protected dsDNA from endonuclease digestion, and increased the rate of nucleation of Escherichia coli RecA onto ssDNA. Single-cell expression analyses revealed that dprA is expressed in the majority of cells throughout a population. Overall, the results suggest that incorporation of RcGTA DNA into the recipient cell genome proceeds through a homologous recombination pathway resembling DNA recombination in natural transformation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".