In molecular biology, entericidins are bacterial antidote

Antidote

An antidote is a substance which can counteract a form of poisoning. The term ultimately derives from the Greek αντιδιδοναι antididonai, "given against"....

/toxin

Toxin

A toxin is a poisonous substance produced within living cells or organisms; man-made substances created by artificial processes are thus excluded...

 peptide

Peptide

Peptides are short polymers of amino acid monomers linked by peptide bonds. They are distinguished from proteins on the basis of size, typically containing less than 50 monomer units. The shortest peptides are dipeptides, consisting of two amino acids joined by a single peptide bond...

s. The entericidin locus

Locus

The word locus is Latin for "place". It can mean:-Positions:*Locus of control, in industrial psychology, having an internal or external locus of control...

 is activated in the stationary phase of growth under high osmolarity conditions by rho-S and simultaneously repressed

Repressor

In molecular genetics, a repressor is a DNA-binding protein that regulates the expression of one or more genes by binding to the operator and blocking the attachment of RNA polymerase to the promoter, thus preventing transcription of the genes. This blocking of expression is called...

 by the osmoregulatory EnvZ/OmpR signal transduction pathway. The entericidin locus

Locus (genetics)

In the fields of genetics and genetic computation, a locus is the specific location of a gene or DNA sequence on a chromosome. A variant of the DNA sequence at a given locus is called an allele. The ordered list of loci known for a particular genome is called a genetic map...

 encodes tandem paralogous genes

Gênes

Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...

 (ecnAB) and directs the synthesis of two small cell-envelope lipoproteins (entericidin A and entericidin B) which can maintain plasmids in bacterial

Bacteria

Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...

 population by means of post-segregational killing.