The replication terminator protein Tus of Escherichia coli promotes polar fork arrest at sequence-specific replication termini (Ter) by antagonizing DNA unwinding by the replicative helicase DnaB. Here, we report that Tus is also a polar antitranslocase. We have used this activity as a tool to uncouple helicase arrest at a Tus-Ter complex from DNA unwinding and have shown that helicase arrest occurred without the generation of a DNA fork or a bubble of unpaired bases at the Tus-Ter complex. A mutant form of Tus, which reduces DnaB-Tus interaction but not the binding affinity of Tus for Ter DNA, was also defective in arresting a sliding DnaB. A model of polar fork arrest that proposes melting of the Tus-Ter complex and flipping of a conserved C residue of Ter at the blocking but not the nonblocking face has been reported. The model suggests that enhanced stability of Tus-Ter interaction caused by DNA melting and capture of a flipped base by Tus generates polarity strictly by enhanced protein-DNA interaction. In contrast, the observations presented here show that polarity of helicase and fork arrest in vitro is generated by a mechanism that not only involves interaction between the terminator protein and the arrested enzyme but also of Tus with Ter DNA, without any melting and base flipping in the termination complex.protein-DNA interaction ͉ protein-protein interaction ͉ site-directed interstrand cross-linking T he replication of DNA in many prokaryotes and in certain regions of eukaryotic chromosomes is specifically terminated at specialized sequences called replication termini (Ter) ( Fig. 1 A and B) that cause orientation-dependent fork arrest, and such arrest performs important physiological functions (1-3). In eukaryotes, sequence-specific replication termini are not present within every replication unit. Instead, the termini are found at specialized locations such as the nontranscribed spacers of rDNA (4) and at the mating type switch locus of Schizosaccharomyces pombe (5). We and others have shown by in vitro analyses that the replication termination proteins of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis are polar contrahelicases, i.e., the proteins cause unidirectional arrest of the replicative helicase DnaB upon binding to the Ter sequences (6-10). The crystal structures of the replication terminator protein (RTP) of B. subtilis (11) and that of E. coli, called Tus (12), have been solved. Despite the fact that the proteins have very different structures, both proteins interact in vitro with their cognate binding sites to arrest DnaB helicase and RNA polymerase of E. coli in a polar mode (10, 13).A satisfactory model of polar fork arrest should take into account the following biological observations. First, a Tus-Ter complex arrests only some helicases such as DnaB but not others such as PcrA, helicase I, and UvrD helicase (9, 14) in vitro. In fact, in vivo genetic experiments show that UvrD helicase removes Tus protein from Ter sites (15). Further evidence of helicase specificity is indicated by the observat...

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Engineering of salinity tolerance in agronomically important crop plants is required to increase their productivity by enabling them to grow in saline soils, which are otherwise left uncultivated. Since an increase in the enzymes of glyoxalase system has been shown to impart salinity tolerance in the model plant tobacco, we used the glyoxalase II gene for engineering salinity tolerance in an important oil yielding crop, Brassica juncea. The transgenic plants of B. juncea overexpressing the glyoxalase II gene showed higher salinity tolerance as compared to the untransformed control plants as observed by delayed senescence in leaf discs at 400 mM and 800 mM NaCl in T1 generation. The percentage of germination of the T2 transgenic seeds was higher at 150 mM and 200 mM NaCl as compared to the seeds of untransformed plants. This for the first time demonstrates the applicability of utilizing the glyoxalase II gene for enhanced salinity tolerance in an oilseed crop plant B. juncea.

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