J. Bacteriol., Aug 1996, 4919-4925, Vol 178, No. 16
Copyright © 1996, American Society for Microbiology

The role of the 5'-end untranslated region of the mRNA for CspA, the major cold-shock protein of Escherichia coli, in cold-shock adaptation

W Jiang, L Fang and M Inouye
Department of Biochemistry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Piscataway 08854, USA.

During cellular adaptation to low temperature, Escherichia coli transiently synthesizes the major cold-shock protein CspA. It was found that adaptation to cold shock is blocked when the 143-base sequence of the 5' untranslated region (5' UTR) of the cspA mRNA is overproduced. The overproduction of this UTR at 15 degrees C caused the synthesis of not only CspA but also other cold-shock proteins such as CspB and CsdA to be no longer transient but rather prolonged. In addition, inhibition of both the synthesis of cellular proteins other than cold-shock proteins and cell growth was observed. Interestingly, when CspA was also overproduced together with the 5' UTR, normal cold-shock adaptive response was resumed without a prolonged lag period of cell growth. This indicates that the 5' UTR of the cspA mRNA and its gene product CspA play a critical role in the regulation of the expression of cold- shock genes and cold-shock adaptation. An 11-base common sequence (cold box) was found in the 5' UTRs of cspA, cspB, and csdA mRNAs. Indeed, the 25-base sequence within the 5' UTR of the cspA mRNA containing the cold-box sequence was able to prolong CspA production at 15 degrees C. We propose that a putative repressor binds to the cold-box sequence of the cold-shock mRNAs during the adaptive process and this binding in turn blocks the transcription of the cold-shock genes or destabilizes their mRNAs. CspA appears to promote either directly or indirectly the repressor function.

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