Fig 8.

Locus profile of SSR42. (A) Chromosomal architecture of the SSR42 locus of S. aureus strain USA300_FPR3757 (contains only 11 single nucleotide polymorphisms with respect to strain LAC [32]). (B) SSR42 transcript sequence as determined by 5′ and 3′ RACE. Underlined is the putative 29-amino-acid ORF beginning with the alternative start codon TTG (at position 527). (C) SSR42 deletion-containing LAC cells were transformed with a plasmid-borne copy of SSR42 containing a T-to-A transversion at the first codon of the transcript's putative 29-amino-acid ORF to create a stop codon at this site. Consequently, the production of any putative amino acid product was eliminated. Transcriptional analysis revealed that SSR42 deletion-containing cells complemented with either a wild-type copy (SSR42⁺) or the mutated copy (SSR42.mut⁺) were capable of complementing the regulatory effects of the RNA molecule.