Mercury resistance

Steingrube VA, RJ Wallace, LC Steele, Y Pang (1991) Mercuric reductase activity and evidence of broad-spectrum mercury resistance among clinical isolates of rapidly growing mycobacteria. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 35 819-823. 

Kawasaki H, H Yahara, K Tonomura (1981) Isolation and characterization of plasmid pUOl mediating deha-logenation of haloacetate and mercury resistance in Moraxella sp. B. A nc Biol Chem 45 1477-1481. 

Some metals can be converted to a less toxic form through enzyme detoxification. The most well-described example of this mechanism is the mercury resistance system, which occurs in S. aureus,43 Bacillus sp.,44 E. coli,45 Streptomyces lividans,46 and Thiobacillus ferrooxidans 47 The mer operon in these bacteria includes two different metal resistance mechanisms.48 MerA employs an enzyme detoxification approach as it encodes a mercury reductase, which converts the divalent mercury cation into elemental mercury 49 Elemental mercury is more stable and less toxic than the divalent cation. Other genes in the operon encode membrane proteins that are involved in the active transport of elemental mercury out of the cell.50 52... 

Barkay, T., Miller, S.M., and Summers, A.O., Bacterial mercury resistance from atoms to ecosystems, FEMS Microbiol Rev, 27 (2), 355-384, 2003. 

Babich, K., Engle, M., Skinner, J.S., and Laddaga, R.A., Deletion mutant analysis of the Staphylococcus aureus plasmid pI258 mercury-resistance determinant, Can J Microbiol, 37 (8), 624-631, 1991. 

Wang, Y., Moore, M., Levinson, H.S., Silver, S., Walsh, C., and Mahler, I., Nucleotide sequence of a chromosomal mercury resistance determinant from a Bacillus sp. with broad-spectrum mercury resistance, J Bacteriol, 171 (1), 83-92,1989. 

Summers, A.O. and Silver, S., Mercury resistance in a plasmid-bearing strain of Escherichia coli, J Bacteriol, 112 (3), 1228-1236, 1972. 

Sedlmeier, R. and Altenbuchner, J., Cloning and DNA sequence analysis of the mercury resistance genes of Streptomyces lividans, Mol Gen Genet, 236 (1), 76-85, 1992. 

Wireman, J., Liebert, C., Smith, T., and Summers, A., Association of mercury resistance with antibiotic resistance in the gram-negative fecal bacteria of primates, Appl Environ Microbiol, 63 (11), 4494-4503, 1997. 

Rasmussen, L.D., Zawadsky, C., Binnerup, S.J., Oregaard, G., Sprensen, S.J., and Kroer, N., Cultivation of hard-to-culture subsurface mercury-resistant bacteria and discovery of new merA gene sequences, Appl Environ Microbiol, 74 (12), 3795-3803, 2008. 

Baldi, F., F. Semplici, and M. Filippelli. 1991. Environmental applications of mercury resistant bacteria. Water Air Soil Pollut. 56 465-475. 

HTHMERR helix turn helix, mercury resistance E(M)AB 0(0) 0(0) ... 

Kritee K, Blum JD, Johnson MW, Bergquist BA, Barkay T (2007) Mercury stable isotope fractionation during reduction of Hg(II) to Hg(0) by mercury resistant microorganisms. Environ Sci Technol41 1889-1895... 

Laddaga, R. A., Chu, L., Mistra, T. K. Silver, S. 1987. Nucleotide sequence and expression of the mercurial-resistance operon from Staphylococcus aureus plasmid pI258. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA, 84, 5106-10. 

Steffan et al., 1989), PCB degraders in microbial consortia (Pettigrew Sayler, 1986), and mercury resistance genes in gram-negative populations (Barkay, Fount Olson, 1985). Assuming the probe works adequately, sensitivity is limited only by the number of colonies that can be processed. 

Barkay, T., Fount, D. L. Olson, B. H. (1985). The preparation of a DNA probe for the detection of mercury resistance genes in Gram-negative bacterial communities. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 49, 686-92. 

Baldi, F. and G. J. Olson. 1987. Effect of cinnabar pyrite oxidation by Thiobacillus ferrooxidans and cinnabar mobilization by a mercury-resistant strain. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 53 772-776. 

Furukawa, K., T. Suzuki, and K. Tonumura, 1969. Decomposition of organic mercurial compounds by mercury resistant bacteria. Agric. Biol. Chem. 33 128-130. 

Tezuka, T., and K. Tonomura. 1976. Purification and properties of an enzyme catalyzing the splitting of carbon-mercury linkages from mercury-resistant... 

H. Pan-Hou, M. Kiyono, H. Omura T. Omura and G. Endo (2002). Polyphosphate produced in recombinant Escherichia coli confers mercury resistance. FEMS Microbiol. Lett., 10325, 159-164. 

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