The <Emphasis Type="Italic">Mycoplasma pneumoniae</Emphasis> MPN229 gene encodes a protein that selectively binds single-stranded DNA and stimulates Recombinase A-mediated DNA strand exchange

Background  

Mycoplasma pneumoniae has previously been characterized as a micro-organism that is genetically highly stable. In spite of this genetic stability, homologous DNA recombination has been hypothesized to lie at the basis of antigenic variation of the major surface protein, P1, of M. pneumoniae. In order to identify the proteins that may be involved in homologous DNA recombination in M. pneumoniae, we set out to characterize the MPN229 open reading frame (ORF), which bears sequence similarity to the gene encoding the single-stranded DNA-binding (SSB) protein of other micro-organisms.