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The Gas Vesicle Gene Cluster from Microcystis aeruginosa and DNA Rearrangements That Lead to Loss of Cell Buoyancy

Unité des Cyanobactéries (URA-CNRS 2172), Département de Microbiologie fondamentale et médicale,¹ Plate-forme Génomique—Pasteur, Génopole Ile de France, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France²

Received 24 September 2003/ Accepted 7 December 2003

Microcystis aeruginosa is a planktonic unicellular cyanobacterium often responsible for seasonal mass occurrences at the surface of freshwater environments. An abundant production of intracellular structures, the gas vesicles, provides cells with buoyancy. A 8.7-kb gene cluster that comprises twelve genes involved in gas vesicle synthesis was identified. Ten of these are organized in two operons, gvpA_IA_IIA_IIICNJX and gvpKFG, and two, gvpV and gvpW, are individually expressed. In an attempt to elucidate the basis for the frequent occurrence of nonbuoyant mutants in laboratory cultures, four gas vesicle-deficient mutants from two strains of M. aeruginosa, PCC 7806 and PCC 9354, were isolated and characterized. Their molecular analysis unveiled DNA rearrangements due to four different insertion elements that interrupted gvpN, gvpV, or gvpW or led to the deletion of the gvpA_I-A_III region. While gvpA, encoding the major gas vesicle structural protein, was expressed in the gvpN, gvpV, and gvpW mutants, immunodetection revealed no corresponding GvpA protein. Moreover, the absence of a gas vesicle structure was confirmed by electron microscopy. This study brings out clues concerning the process driving loss of buoyancy in M. aeruginosa and reveals the requirement for gas vesicle synthesis of two newly described genes, gvpV and gvpW.

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