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Journal of Bacteriology, December 1999, p. 7634-7638, Vol. 181, No. 24
Lehrstuhl für Mikrobiologie,
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen,1 and Laboratorium für
Mikrobiologie, Philipps-Universität Marburg and
Max-Planck-Institut für Terrestrische Mikrobiologie,
Marburg,2 Federal Republic of Germany
Received 26 April 1999/Accepted 1 October 1999
We identified five single amino acid exchanges in CcpA that lead to
permanent repression of the xylose utilization genes in the absence of
glucose. Other proteins from the CcpA regulon also show
glucose-independent regulation in the mutants. The mutant CcpA proteins
bind to the DNA target catabolite responsive elements without the
corepressor HPr-Ser-P.
Catabolite control protein CcpA is
the central regulator of carbon catabolite repression (CCR) in
Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus subtilis, and other
gram-positive bacteria of low G+C content (5, 11, 12, 21, 22,
25). Genes and operons coding for the utilization of less
favorable carbon sources, such as xylose, are regulated by CcpA on the
level of transcription in the presence of rapidly metabolizable sugars
like glucose or fructose (12). The mechanism of CCR is
distinct from the one described for Escherichia coli
(reviewed in reference 27). CcpA can either repress
or activate transcription. Activation was shown in two cases,
ackA in B. subtilis (31) and the
las operon of Lactococcus lactis (22).
Repression by CcpA was demonstrated for multiple genes and operons in
B. subtilis, B. megaterium, and other
gram-positive bacteria (10).
CcpA binds to DNA target sites termed catabolite responsive elements
(CRE). Repression depends on the presence of HPr-Ser-P or Crh-Ser-P;
the former is a component of the phosphoenolpyruvate:sugar phosphotransferase system whose phosphorylation state reflects glycolytic activity (30). The requirement for a corepressor for CcpA was confirmed by DNA footprinting studies involving CRE sequences from the xyl and gnt operons. In
addition to HPr-Ser-P, glucose-6-phosphate also triggered CRE binding
by CcpA in both systems in in vitro assays (7, 9, 24).
Similar experiments with the xynB CRE showed that Crh-Ser-P
can substitute for HPr-Ser-P as a corepressor, and both Crh-Ser-P and
HPr-Ser-P can trigger CcpA-regulated CCR of the lev operon
in vivo (8, 23). In contrast to these results, in vivo CCR
of amyE is independent of phosphorylated HPr (14,
33), and even though CcpA-CRE interaction was strengthened by a
combination of HPr-Ser-P and fructose-1,6-bisphosphate or NADP, it did
not improve repression in in vitro transcription (15).
Accordingly, CcpA is thought to receive signals from HPr-Ser-P or
Crh-Ser-P and possibly from other effectors.
A direct interaction of CcpA with HPr-Ser-P has been demonstrated
(3, 13), and a putative HPr-Ser-P binding site on CcpA was
recently identified (17). CcpA is a member of the LacI-GalR family of bacterial repressors, and sequence similarities, limited proteolysis, and mutational data suggest a common three-dimensional fold for CcpA, LacI, and PurR (13, 16, 17, 34). On the other
hand, HPr-Ser-P does not bind in the effector binding cleft where
isopropyl- CcpA mutagenesis and screen for glucose-independent
repression.
We have conducted a screen for CcpA variants which
repress the xylose utilization genes of B. megaterium in the
absence of a repressing carbon source. A plasmid library of mutated
ccpA alleles was generated by in vitro mutagenesis with
nitrite treatment, as described previously (18). It was
transformed into B. megaterium WH353 [lac
0021-9193/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Mutations in Catabolite Control Protein CcpA
Showing Glucose-Independent Regulation in Bacillus
megaterium

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ABSTRACT
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-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) binds to LacI and hypoxanthine binds to PurR (see Fig. 4). It is therefore
interesting to collect further evidence about the activation of CcpA
for CRE binding.
ccpA
gdh2
(xylA-spoVG-lacZ)
xylR],
which carries an in-frame ccpA deletion and a
xylA-lacZ fusion as a probe for catabolite repression
activity. An additional chromosomal deletion in xylR ensured
that repression of xylA-lacZ transcription is only caused by
the plasmid-encoded CcpA. We screened the transformants on M9 minimal
medium containing succinate, which is neutral in CCR, as a carbon
source and
5-bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl-
-D-galactopyranoside (X-Gal)
to identify CcpA mutants which permanently repress xyl expression, thus displaying the repression phenotype
ccpAk.
-galactosidase activities. A
total of 28 of the original clones were regarded as glucose independent
in CCR (ccpAk phenotype), since they repressed
xylA-lacZ expression in succinate to 50% or less of
wild-type expression in the absence of glucose. Total cell extracts
from the mutants were analyzed by immunoblotting with anti-CcpA
antiserum as described previously (16, 19). All of the
mutant proteins were present at levels similar to that of wild-type
CcpA expressed from the same vector (data not shown).
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2D gel electrophoresis of protein extracts from wild-type and ccpAk mutant cells. To analyze the effects of the ccpAk mutations on the entire CcpA regulon we used two-dimensional (2D) gel electrophoresis. Total soluble protein extracts were prepared from the B. megaterium ccpA deletion mutant WH353 carrying the empty vector pWH1509K (26) or derivatives of pWH2051 carrying the genes for wild-type CcpA or one of the five single amino acid CcpAk mutants. Protein extract (100 mg) was then subjected to 2D protein electrophoresis as described by Völker et al. (32), and the protein profiles of the different strains were compared after silver staining. A typical gel is shown in Fig. 2 (left panel).
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Purification of mutant proteins and PAGE DNA retardation assays. We tested DNA binding of the mutant proteins with and without the corepressor HPr in vitro. For this, the five ccpAk alleles leading to single amino acid substitutions were cloned into overexpression vectors, and the proteins were overproduced in B. megaterium and purified by column chromatography (data not shown) as has been described for the wild-type protein (9). The apparently homogeneous preparations were then used for DNA retardation experiments. To obtain the corepressor HPr-Ser-P, the gene for HPr from B. megaterium was cloned into the same overexpression system, and overproduced in B. megaterium (33a). Purification was carried out essentially as described previously for HPr from Staphylococcus aureus (1). The protein was subsequently phosphorylated at Ser46 with partially purified HPr kinase from B. megaterium; the protocol was taken from Deutscher and Saier, Jr. (4), with minor adaptations. The preparation contained more than 90% HPr-Ser-P as estimated by nondenaturating polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) (data not shown).
For the PAGE DNA retardation assays, a synthetic double-stranded oligonucleotide containing CRE (26mer, as described in reference 13) was mixed with purified CcpA and HPr-Ser-P at concentrations of 5 µM (DNA), 10 µM (CcpA), and 10 µM (HPr-Ser-P) in a buffer containing 100 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.5), 1 mM EDTA, and 10% glycerol. The mixture was incubated at 37°C for 10 min prior to the loading of 5 µl of it on a nondenaturing 5% polyacrylamide minigel (9 by 6 cm). The gel was run in 100 mM Tris-HCl (pH 7.5)-1 mM EDTA at 110 V for 45 min and stained with ethidium bromide. Under the conditions employed, the wild-type CcpA protein could only form a complex with the DNA fragment if the corepressor HPr-Ser-P was present, as shown in Fig. 3. This effect is specific as it cannot be induced by the addition of unphosphorylated HPr (data not shown). Figure 3 shows that the same fragment is complexed by all five CcpAk proteins in the absence of the corepressor. The addition of HPr-Ser-P does not increase the amount of complex formed (only shown for CcpAkE77L). Thus, all CcpAk proteins exhibit HPr-Ser-P-independent DNA binding in vitro.
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Position of the mutations in the three-dimensional structure. It was surprising that the five amino acid substitutions causing the ccpAk phenotype are located at distant positions on the protein chain. To further assess their location we took advantage of the putative common three-dimensional fold of CcpA and the LacI-GalR family of bacterial regulators (13, 16). Sequence comparisons of CcpA proteins to other family members showed that they constitute a distinct subgroup among LacI-GalR regulators (17), but overall structural similarities should be sufficient to evaluate amino acid location. The model of CcpA shown in Fig. 4 is based on the three-dimensional structure of PurR (29) (Protein Data Bank entry 1PNR). The positions mutated in the CcpAk proteins are indicated. The most striking common feature is their location in the protein core and not in the DNA binding heads. They highlight different regions of the protein with possible functional importance: the dimerization surface, the effector binding cleft, and the corepressor binding site.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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We thank Kerstin Mahr for help with some experiments, Sabine Pöhlmann for a gift of purified HPr-Ser-P protein, Alexandra Kraus and Richard Brennan for fruitful discussions, and Alexandra Schütz for expert technical assistance with 2D protein electrophoresis.
This study was supported by the EU Biotech Program, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through SFB 473, and the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie.
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FOOTNOTES |
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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Lehrstuhl für Mikrobiologie, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Staudtstr. 5, 91058 Erlangen, Federal Republic of Germany. Phone: 49-9131-8528081. Fax: 49-9131-8528082. E-mail: whillen{at}biologie.uni-erlangen.de.
Present address: Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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