Complementation of mutants of the stability locus of IncFII plasmid NR1: Essential functions of the trans-acting stbA and stbB gene products

A series of unstable mutants of the stability ( stb) locus of IncFII plasmid NR1 was subjected to a complementation analysis. The mutant collection included plasmids with point, insertion and deletion mutations in stb. These mutations affected the tandem genes stbA and stbB, which encode stability proteins StbA and StbB, or the P ab transcription promoter, which is located upstream from stbA in a region that contains an essential cis-acting site. Deletion mutants that lacked the region containing promoter P ab could not be complemented (stabilized) by providing StbA and StbB in trans. Deletion mutants that lacked stbA and stbB but retained the P ab region were complemented in trans but required both StbA and StbB, indicating that both proteins were essential for stable inheritance. stbA − point mutants were complemented in trans by either wild-type or stbA + stbB − clones of the stability region. However, mutants with insertions in stbA were complemented only by wild-type clones, which suggested the insertions were polar on expression of the downstream stbB gene. A plasmid with a stbB − point mutation was complemented in trans by wild-type but not by stbA − stbB + clones. In addition, plasmid clones that expressed StbB in the absence of StbA caused destabilization of (were incompatible with) stb + derivatives of NR1 in trans, whereas clones that expressed only wild-type StbA or both StbA plus StbB did not. Plasmid clones that contained only the essential cis-acting P ab region did not cause destabilization of stb + plasmids in trans. These results suggest that an excess of StbB protein provided in trans may cause a depletion of the essential StbA protein. Therefore, these results may be consistent with the hypothesis that StbB is an autorepressor of the stbAB operon.