Feeling the heat at the millennium: Thermosensors playing with fire

Pierre Mandin (1) , Jörgen Johansson (2)

1 LCB - Laboratoire de chimie bactérienne
2 Umeå University

An outstanding question regards the ability of organisms to sense their environments and respond in a suitable way. Pathogenic bacteria in particular exploit host‐temperature sensing as a cue for triggering virulence gene expression. This micro‐review does not attempt to fully cover the field of bacterial thermosensors and in detail describe each identified case. Instead, the review focus on the time‐period at the end of the 1990's and beginning of the 2000's when several key discoveries were made, identifying protein, DNA and RNA as potential thermosensors controlling gene expression in several different bacterial pathogens in general and on the prfA thermosensor of Listeria monocytogenes in particular.

Keywords: Listeria monocytogenes; PrfA; RNA‐thermosensors; thermosensor; virulence

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]

Pierre Mandin, Jörgen Johansson. Feeling the heat at the millennium: Thermosensors playing with fire. Molecular Microbiology, 2020, 113 (3), pp.588-592. ⟨10.1111/mmi.14468⟩. ⟨hal-02908899⟩