Journal of Bacteriology, May 2001, p. 2733-2745, Vol. 183, No. 9
0021-9193/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.183.9.2733-2745.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Received 11 December 2000/Accepted 2 February 2001
Sequences between
332 and
39 upstream of the hilA
promoter are required for repression of hilA. An
unidentified repressor is thought to bind these upstream repressing
sequences (URS) to inhibit hilA expression. Two AraC-like
transcriptional regulators encoded on Salmonella
pathogenicity island 1 (SPI1), HilC and HilD, bind to the URS to
counteract the repression of hilA. The URS is required for
regulation of hilA by osmolarity, oxygen, PhoP/PhoQ, and
SirA/BarA. Here, we show that FadD, FliZ, PhoB, and EnvZ/OmpR also
require the URS to regulate hilA. These environmental and
regulatory factors may affect hilA expression by altering the expression or activity of HilC, HilD, or the unknown repressor. To
begin investigating these possibilities, we tested the effects of
environmental and regulatory factors on hilC and
hilD expression. We also examined hilA
regulation when hilC or hilD was disrupted or
expressed to a high level. Although hilC is regulated by
all environmental conditions and regulatory factors that modulate hilA expression, hilC is not required for the
regulation of hilA by any conditions or factors except
EnvZ/OmpR. In contrast, hilD is absolutely required for
hilA expression, but environmental conditions and
regulatory factors have little or no effect on hilD
expression. We speculate that EnvZ/OmpR regulates hilA by altering the expression and/or activity of hilC, while all
other regulatory conditions and mutations regulate hilA by
modulating hilD posttranscriptionally. We also discuss
models in which the regulation of hilA expression is
mediated by modulation of the expression or activity of one or more repressors.
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