In this communication, we describe evidence demonstrating the capacity of Atl, the major Staphylococcus aureus autolytic enzyme to bind DNA. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) show that both the Atl protein and the endo-β-N-acetylglucosaminidase (GL) domain were able to bind DNA of nonspecific sequence. The implications of this unexpected observation for the physiology of S. aureus remain to be explored.
Keywords: Atl autolysin; DNA binding; Staphylococcus aureus; protein-DNA interaction.
© 2014 The Authors. MicrobiologyOpen published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.