Stress induces the transcription of toxin-antitoxin systems but does not activate toxin

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether there was evidence that the endoribonclease toxins of type II TA systems of E. coli were active following treatment of cells with chloramphenicol RNA-seq was performed on RNA extracted from E. coli MG1655 wildtype and a strain lacking ten toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems (∆10TA) following 15, 30, and 60 min of chloramphenicol treatment. Evidence of endoribonuclease cleavage was assessed by examining the ratio of wildtype (+TA) to the deletion strain and comparing this to existing toxin overexpression datasets.