Detailed description of experimental procedures is provided in Supplementary methods. All bacterial strains and plasmids used in this study are listed in Supplementary Tables 1 and 2. All proteins were expressed, purified and characterized using SUMO-tagging strategy described earlier for E. coli RelA (33 (link)) and B. subtilis Rel (12 (link)) (Supplementary Figure S1A-G). The monomeric nature of 50 nM B. subtilis Rel and 100 nM E. coli RelA was confirmed by mass photometry (34 (link)) using Refeyn OneMP instrument (Refeyn Ltd.) (Supplementary Figure S1H and I).