Moving in for the kill: activation of an endoribonuclease toxin by a quorum-sensing peptide

Abstract

Extracellular death factor is a quorum-sensing pentapeptide that relays cell density information to an intracellular toxin-antitoxin complex. In this issue of Molecular Cell, Belitsky et al. (2011) demonstrate that the peptide competes with the antitoxin for toxin binding and directly activates the latter's endoribonuclease activity.