Microcin
Class of very small bacterially produced peptide antibiotics
Microcins are very small bacteriocins, composed of relatively few amino acids. For this reason, they are distinct from their larger protein cousins. The classic example is microcin V, of Escherichia coli. Subtilosin A is another bacteriocin from Bacillus subtilis. The peptide has a cyclized backbone and forms three cross-links between the sulphurs of Cys13, Cys7 and Cys4 and the alpha-positions of Phe22, Thr28 and Phe31.
Microcins produced by commensal E. coli strains target and eliminate enteric pathogens such as Salmonella enterica by mimicking the siderophores the pathogens use for iron scavenging. Microcins also help commensal strains of E. coli outcompete pathogenic strains.
BACTIBASE database is an open-access database for bacteriocins including microcins.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Microcin”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- PDB 1pxq EBI.jpg by Jawahar Swaminathan and MSD staff at the European Bioinformatics Institute, Public domain
- Nanos (Microcin J25).jpg by Julian Voss-Andreae, CC BY-SA 3.0
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