Resumen:
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The discovery of bacterial polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) in the cytoplasm of Bacillus megaterium by Lemoigne (Lemoigne, 1926) unveiled a new class of in vivo synthesized polymers with adjustable properties and different applications (as plastics, in medical devices, etc.); it also provided impetus to research on proteins involved in PHA accumulation.Interest in phasins emerged through two major observations: i) that they bind to PHA, potentially establishing a network-like protein layer on the surface of intracellular PHA granules; and ii) that their concentration can reach 5% (wt/wt) of the total protein content of PHA-accumulating cells (Wieczorek et al., 1995; Maestro and Sanz, 2017). Soon after it was found that these proteins are almost exclusively produced when PHA is synthesized (York et al., 2002), and that they play important roles in its biogenesis, helping to ensure optimal cell fitness. For example, phasins have been found to engage in the physical stabilization of PHA granules at the polymer-cytoplasm interface, and to participate in the control of the number and size of these granules, their segregation into daughter cells, and their mobilization (reviewed in (Mezzina and Pettinari, 2016; Maestro and Sanz, 2017))...
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