Role of a local transcription factor in governing cellular carbon/nitrogen homeostasis in Pseudomonas fluorescens
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Date
2021-04-06
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research
Rights
(c) 2021 The Author/s
CC BY 4.0
CC BY 4.0
Abstract
Autoactivation of two-component systems (TCSs) can increase the sensitivity to signals but inherently cause a delayed response. Here, we describe a unique negative feedback mechanism enabling the global NtrB/NtrC regulator to rapidly respond to nitrogen starvation over the course of histidine utilization (hut) in Pseudomonas fluorescens. NtrBC directly activates transcription of hut genes, but overexpression will produce excess ammonium leading to NtrBC inactivation. To prevent this from occurring, the histidine-responsive repressor HutC fine-tunes ntrBC autoactivation: HutC and NtrC bind to the same operator site in the ntrBC promoter. This newly discovered low-affinity binding site shows little sequence similarity with the consensus sequence that HutC recognizes for substrate-specific induction of hut operons. A combination of genetic and transcriptomic analysis indicated that both ntrBC and hut promoter activities cannot be stably maintained in the ΔhutC background when histidine fluctuates at high concentrations. Moreover, the global carbon regulator CbrA/CbrB is involved in directly activating hut transcription while de-repressing hut translation via the CbrAB-CrcYZ-Crc/Hfq regulatory cascade. Together, our data reveal that the local transcription factor HutC plays a crucial role in governing NtrBC to maintain carbon/nitrogen homeostasis through the complex interactions between two TCSs (NtrBC and CbrAB) at the hut promoter.
Description
Keywords
Bacterial Proteins, Binding Sites, Carbon, Feedback, Physiological, Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial, Histidine, Homeostasis, Nitrogen, Promoter Regions, Genetic, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Repressor Proteins, Transcription Factors, Transcriptional Activation
Citation
Naren N, Zhang X-X. (2021). Role of a local transcription factor in governing cellular carbon/nitrogen homeostasis in Pseudomonas fluorescens.. Nucleic Acids Res. 49. 6. (pp. 3204-3216).