{"doi":"10.3390/v12090976","title":"The Phage-Encoded N-Acetyltransferase Rac Mediates Inactivation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa Transcription by Cleavage of the RNA Polymerase Alpha Subunit","abstract":"In this study, we describe the biological function of the phage-encoded protein RNA polymerase alpha subunit cleavage protein (Rac), a predicted Gcn5-related acetyltransferase encoded by phiKMV-like viruses. These phages encode a single-subunit RNA polymerase for transcription of their late (structure- and lysis-associated) genes, whereas the bacterial RNA polymerase is used at the earlier stages of infection. Rac mediates the inactivation of bacterial transcription by introducing a specific cleavage in the α subunit of the bacterial RNA polymerase. This cleavage occurs within the flexible linker sequence and disconnects the C-terminal domain, required for transcription initiation from most highly active cellular promoters. To achieve this, Rac likely taps into a novel post-translational modification (PTM) mechanism within the host Pseudomonas aeruginosa. From an evolutionary perspective, this novel phage-encoded regulation mechanism confirms the importance of PTMs in the prokaryotic metabolism and represents a new way by which phages can hijack the bacterial host metabolism.","journal":"Viruses","year":2020,"id":69933,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":20,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9569,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":369927,"name":"Jeroen De Smet","orcid":"0000-0002-7200-089X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369928,"name":"Jeroen Wagemans","orcid":"0000-0002-2185-5724","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":370623,"name":"Natalia Akulenko","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369929,"name":"Evgeny Klimuk","orcid":"0000-0001-5314-038X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":370624,"name":"Subray Hedge","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":216531,"name":"Marleen Voet","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369930,"name":"Hanne Hendrix","orcid":"0000-0002-5432-9456","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369931,"name":"Jan Paeshuyse","orcid":"0000-0003-2396-354X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":370625,"name":"Bart Landuyt","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369932,"name":"Hua Xu","orcid":"0000-0001-9283-080X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369933,"name":"John S. Blanchard","orcid":"0000-0002-9195-4402","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":57617,"name":"Konstantin Severinov","orcid":"0000-0001-9706-450X","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369934,"name":"Rob Lavigne","orcid":"0000-0001-7377-1314","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369926,"name":"Pieter‐Jan Ceyssens","orcid":"0000-0001-7735-8316","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":66,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:42:48.813846Z","pmid":"32887488","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}