Kid, a small protein of the parD stability system of plasmid R1, is an inhibitor of DNA replication acting at the initiation of DNA synthesis.

The Kid and Kis proteins are the killer component and the antagonist belonging to parD, a killer stability system of plasmid R1. The Kid and Kis proteins have been purified, the second one as a C-LYT-Kis fusion that conserves the antagonistic activity of the Kis protein, but not its auto-regulatory potential. Kid inhibits in vitro replication of CoEl to a basal level without altering the superhelicity of the template but it does not substantially affect in vitro replication of P4, a DnaA, DnaB, DnaC and DnaG-independent replicon. Kid inhibits lytic induction of a lambda, prophage, but this inhibition can be neutralized by excess DnaB. In addition, a multicopy dnaB recombinant, but not a multicopy dnaG recombinant, prevents the toxicity associated with this protein. Inhibition of ColE1 replication by Kid in vitro is prevented by the C-LYT-Kis protein. Functional analysis indicates that the antagonistic activity of Kis is independent of its activity as a co-regulator of the parD promoter. It is also shown that C-LYT-Kis and Kid interact, forming a tight complex. These results strongly suggest that the toxicity of the kid protein is due to inhibition of DnaB-dependent DNA replication, and that direct protein-protein interactions are involved in the neutralization of the activity of the killer protein by the antagonist.