89 research outputs found
Posttranscriptional Regulation of the Yersinia pestis Cyclic AMP Receptor Protein Crp and Impact on Virulence
ABSTRACTThe cyclic AMP receptor protein (Crp) is a transcriptional regulator that controls the expression of numerous bacterial genes, usually in response to environmental conditions and particularly by sensing the availability of carbon. In the plague pathogen Yersinia pestis, Crp regulates the expression of multiple virulence factors, including components of the type III secretion system and the plasminogen activator protease Pla. The regulation of Crp itself, however, is distinctly different from that found in the well-studied Escherichia coli system. Here, we show that at physiological temperatures, the synthesis of Crp in Y.pestis is positively regulated at the posttranscriptional level. The loss of the small RNA chaperone Hfq results in decreased Crp protein levels but not in steady-state Crp transcript levels, and this regulatory effect occurs within the 5′ untranslated region (UTR) of the Crp mRNA. The posttranscriptional activation of Crp synthesis is required for the expression of pla, and decoupling crp from Hfq through the use of an exogenously controlled promoter and 5′ UTR increases Pla protein levels as well as partially rescues the growth defect associated with the loss of Hfq. Finally, we show that both Hfq and the posttranscriptional regulation of Crp contribute to the virulence of Y.pestis during pneumonic plague. The Hfq-dependent, posttranscriptional regulation of Crp may be specific to Yersinia species, and thus our data help explain the dramatic growth and virulence defects associated with the loss of Hfq in Y.pestis.IMPORTANCEThe Crp protein is a major transcriptional regulator in bacteria, and its synthesis is tightly controlled to avoid inappropriate induction of the Crp regulon. In this report, we provide the first evidence of Crp regulation in an Hfq-dependent manner at the posttranscriptional level. Our discovery that the synthesis of Crp in Yersinia pestis is Hfq dependent adds an additional layer of regulation to catabolite repression in this bacterium. Our work provides a mechanism by which the plague pathogen links not just the sensing of glucose or other carbon sources but also other signals that influence Crp abundance via the expression of small RNAs to the induction of the Crp regulon. In turn, this allows Y.pestis to fine-tune Crp levels to optimize virulence gene expression during plague infection and may allow the bacterium to adapt to its unique environmental niches
Belle II Vertex Detector Performance
The Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB accelerator (KEK, Tsukuba, Japan) collected its first e+e− collision data in the spring 2019. The aim of accumulating a 50 times larger data sample than Belle at KEKB, a first generation B-Factory, presents substantial challenges to both the collider and the detector, requiring not only state-of-the-art hardware, but also modern software algorithms for tracking and alignment.
The broad physics program requires excellent performance of the vertex detector, which is composed of two layers of DEPFET pixels and four layers of double sided-strip sensors. In this contribution, an overview of the vertex detector of Belle II and our methods to ensure its optimal performance, are described, and the first results and experiences from the first physics run are presented
Measurements of the branching fractions for decays at Belle II
This paper reports a study of decays using
fb of data collected during 2019--2020 by the Belle II experiment at the
SuperKEKB asymmetric-energy collider, corresponding to events. We find , ,
, and signal events in the decay modes , ,
, and , respectively. The uncertainties quoted for the
signal yield are statistical only. We report the branching fractions of these
decays: where the first
uncertainty is statistical, and the second is systematic. The results are
consistent with world-average values
Observation of decays using the 2019-2022 Belle II data sample
We present a measurement of the branching fractions of four decay modes. The measurement is based on data from
SuperKEKB electron-positron collisions at the resonance
collected with the Belle II detector and corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of . The event yields are extracted from fits
to the distributions of the difference between expected and observed meson
energy to separate signal and background, and are efficiency-corrected as a
function of the invariant mass of the system. We find the branching
fractions to be: where the first uncertainty is statistical and
the second systematic. These results include the first observation of
, , and decays and a significant improvement in the precision
of compared to previous measurements
The Belle II Physics Book
We present the physics program of the Belle II experiment, located on the
intensity frontier SuperKEKB collider. Belle II collected its first
collisions in 2018, and is expected to operate for the next decade. It is
anticipated to collect 50/ab of collision data over its lifetime. This book is
the outcome of a joint effort of Belle II collaborators and theorists through
the Belle II theory interface platform (B2TiP), an effort that commenced in
2014. The aim of B2TiP was to elucidate the potential impacts of the Belle II
program, which includes a wide scope of physics topics: B physics, charm, tau,
quarkonium, electroweak precision measurements and dark sector searches. It is
composed of nine working groups (WGs), which are coordinated by teams of
theorist and experimentalists conveners: Semileptonic and leptonic B decays,
Radiative and Electroweak penguins, phi_1 and phi_2 (time-dependent CP
violation) measurements, phi_3 measurements, Charmless hadronic B decay, Charm,
Quarkonium(like), tau and low-multiplicity processes, new physics and global
fit analyses. This book highlights "golden- and silver-channels", i.e. those
that would have the highest potential impact in the field. Theorists
scrutinised the role of those measurements and estimated the respective
theoretical uncertainties, achievable now as well as prospects for the future.
Experimentalists investigated the expected improvements with the large dataset
expected from Belle II, taking into account improved performance from the
upgraded detector.Comment: 689 page
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