Toxic component of a type II toxin-antitoxin (TA) system. Inhibits translation by cleavage of mRNA. Induced by amino acid starvation. Induced by the protein synthesis inhibitors chloramphenicol, kanamycin and to a lesser extent by spectinomycin. HigB-1/HigA-1 has been shown to stabilize plasmids very efficiently in E.coli. Three hours of ectopic expression of higB-1 results in bacteriostasis without any detectable loss of viability. Extended N-terminus.