Crystal Structure of the Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli AtaT-AtaR Toxin-Antitoxin Complex (Structure)

Yashiro et al., report the crystal structure of the enterohemorrhagic E. coli AtaT-AtaR, a toxin-antitoxin protein complex. AtaT acetylates the methionyl initiator tRNAfMet and inhibits translation initiation. The AtaT-AtaR complex structure revealed that the antitoxin AtaR prevents the toxin AtaT from forming an enzymatically active dimer, thus repressing the AtaT activity.