# TraA

> Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/TraA
> Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/TraA.md
> Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TraA
> Source revision: 954975262
> License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

The '''traA''' gene codes for [relaxase](/source/relaxase), which is an enzyme that initiates plasmid DNA transfer during [bacterial conjugation](/source/bacterial_conjugation).  Relaxase forms a [relaxosome](/source/relaxosome) complex with auxiliary proteins to initiate conjugation.  Relaxosome binds to the [origin of transfer](/source/origin_of_transfer) (oriT) sequence and cleaves the DNA strand that will be transferred (the T strand).  

The ''TraA'' gene is usually found on megaplasmids in bacteria, and it is somewhat conserved among different bacterial species.  Thirty-one percent and 29 percent of ''Rhodococcus erthypolis'' TraA residues are identical to [Gordonia westfalica](/source/Gordonia_westfalica) TraA and [Arthrobacter aurescens](/source/Arthrobacter_aurescens) TraA, respectively (Yang et al. 2006).

Among [actinomycetales](/source/actinomycetales), it is common to find that the traA gene codes for both relaxase and [helicase](/source/helicase).  

== References ==
{{reflist}}
*Chen et al., “The Ins and Outs of DNA Transfer in Bacteria.” Science 310, 1456-1460. 
*Yang et al., “Characterization of the mobilization determinants of pAN12, a small replicon from Rhodococcus erythropolis AN12.” Plasmid 57, 71-81.

Category:Prokaryote genes

---
Adapted from the Wikipedia article [TraA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TraA) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TraA?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.