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Journal of Bacteriology, December 2002, p. 6734-6738, Vol. 184, No. 23
0021-9193/02/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.184.23.6734-6738.2002
Copyright © 2002, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Biochemistry, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801
Received 23 May 2002/ Accepted 5 August 2002
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In the present study, substitution and deletion mutagenesis of the pyrG 5' leader within pyrG'-lacZ transcriptional fusions (8) was used to identify the elements of primary RNA sequence and secondary structure that are required for normal repression of pyrG expression by cytidine. The parent strain, QM401, contained the native pyrG sequence from nt -49 to +81 fused to lacZ. This pyrG sequence specifies the pyrG promoter, the transcription start site, and all of the nucleotides of the pyrG transcript through the transcription termination sequence previously shown to be required for repression of pyrG (8) (Fig. 1). (Note that the previous numbering of the pyrG transcript [8] has been shifted by 1 nt in the present report. Mapping of the start of transcription by primer extension indicated that the 5' sequence of the pyrG transcript was 5'-GGCUCUUCAAAA, but the results presented here, particularly experiments with strain QM416 [Table 1], strongly indicate that the transcript actually begins with the sequence 5'-GGGCUCUUAAAA.) The plasmid used to generate strain QM401 was constructed by PCR amplification of part of plasmid pJH4133 (12). The plasmids used to generate all of the mutant pyrG'-lacZ fusions were constructed by the same method, in which two long oligonucleotides that contained the desired mutations were chemically synthesized. Each oligonucleotide was designed to contain the desired mutation and the desired restriction site at its 5' end. The two oligonucleotides, which were complementary to each other by about 20 nt at their 3' ends, were annealed and filled in with the Klenow fragment of DNA polymerase I. Full-length extended products were purified and digested with EcoRI and BamHI. The parent pyrG'-lacZ fusion construct and all mutant forms of it were inserted into the integration plasmid pDH32 (3) at its EcoRI and BamHI sites and integrated as single copies into B. subtilis strain HC-11 (pyrB::Sptr [4]) at the amyE locus as previously described (8). Regulation of pyrG'-lacZ expression in these fusion-integrant strains, which require pyrimidines for growth, was studied by growth and measurement of ß-galactosidase activity in cells grown on cytidine (repressing conditions) and on orotate, which is a poor pyrimidine source (derepressing conditions), as in our previous studies (8). Strain QM401 exhibited 15-fold regulation of pyrG'-lacZ expression by cytidine (Table 1), which was similar to that observed previously with other pyrG'-lacZ fusions (8).
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FIG. 1. Nucleotide sequence at the 5' end of the B. subtilis pyrG 5' untranslated leader RNA. DNA specifying the pyrG promoter and this leader RNA was fused to lacZ for the studies of pyrG expression in this work. Three RNA sequences found to be conserved in the pyrG leader sequences of several gram-positive bacteria (8) are shown in boldface. The computer program MFOLD (7, 15) predicts the secondary structure shown. The transcription terminator stem-loop following nucleotide +38 was previously shown to be essential for repression of pyrG expression by cytidine (8). Numbering of the sequence is based on the G nucleotide at +1 as the probable start site of transcription (see the text).
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TABLE 1. Mutagenesis of the conserved sequence at the 5' end of the pyrG leader
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The nucleotide at position +4 in the pyrG transcript is C in all of the pyrG sequences we compared (8). Replacement of this C by U (strain QM413) permitted normal regulation of a pyrG'-lacZ fusion-integrant, but replacement by A (strain QM412) abolished normal regulation. In the latter case, expression was relatively high under both repressing and derepressing conditions; that is, this mutation permitted antitermination even when the medium contained high levels of cytidine. Replacement of the U at nucleotide +5 with either G or C (QM417 and QM417C) yielded fusions that displayed normal regulation. We did not construct mutations of the C nucleotide at +6, but it was previously shown that replacement of this nucleotide by U had no effect on regulation of a different pyrG'-lacZ fusion-integrant (8). These results, together with those presented in the next section, which indicate that the nucleotides +5 and +6 can be deleted without loss of normal regulation, lead to the conclusion that normal regulation requires only the sequence GGGC/U at the 5' end of the pyrG transcript.
Nucleotides between the 5'-GGGC sequence and the pyrG attenuation terminator are not required for normal regulation. We next sought to determine whether there was a requirement for specific nucleotide sequences or RNA secondary structures lying between the conserved GGGC sequence at the 5' end of pyrG transcripts and the terminator stem-loop (nt +39 to +66), which contains six conserved base pairs at the base of its stem. The RNA secondary structure prediction computer program MFOLD (7, 15) predicted the possible presence of a small stem-loop between nt +4 and +21 (Fig. 1), although this secondary structure was not consistently predicted for the pyrG leader RNAs from other species. Substitution of nt +16 through +21 with nucleotides that would prevent base pairing with nt +4 through +9 (Table 2, QM406) had no significant effect on regulation. This result ruled out participation of this putative stem-loop or the specific sequence GAAGAG at positions +16 to +21 in antitermination control of pyrG. We previously excluded another potential antiterminator stem-loop (formed by base pairing of nt +23 to +30 with nt +35 to +42) from participation in pyrG regulation by substitution of the nucleotides from +22 to +30 with nucleotides that cannot base pair with the +35 to +42 sequence (8). Since the specific nucleotide sequence from +16 to +30 is not important for pyrG regulation, we deleted these nucleotides and observed that the resultant pyrG'-lacZ fusion was still regulated normally (repression ratio of 12). Further stepwise deletions of the nucleotides between the conserved GGGC sequence at the 5' end of the pyrG transcript and the terminator at +39 to +67 were conducted, and characterization of the resultant pyrG'-lacZ fusions demonstrated that, surprisingly, all of the nucleotides between the U at +7 and the G at +39, a nucleotide that participates in the first of six conserved base pairs of the terminator stem, could be deleted without significant loss in normal regulation (Table 2, QM411). Additional deletion of C at +6 and U at +5 yielded fusions with somewhat reduced overall expression but normal or even higher-than-normal repression ratios (Table 2, QM415 and QM420). Further deletion of one additional nucleotide, the C residue at +4, yielded a fusion that was expressed at very low activity but appeared to retain some regulation by cytidine (strain QM421). We conclude that there are no specific RNA sequences or secondary structures between +4 and +39 that participate in the antitermination control of pyrG expression.
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TABLE 2. Mutagenesis of the linker region between the 5' conserved sequence and the terminator in the pyrG leader
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FIG. 2. Mutagenesis of the conserved sequences in the terminator stem of the pyrG leader. Nucleotides shown in boldface are those that are found at +39 to +44 in the 5' stem of the wild-type pyrG terminator; underlined nucleotides are those that are found at +61 to +66 in the 3' stem of the wild-type terminator. (Also see Table 3.)
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TABLE 3. Mutagenesis of the conserved sequences in the terminator stem of the pyrG leader
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The conserved GCUCCC sequence in the pyrG leader terminator is specifically involved in regulation of repression. From the preceding studies, we formulated the hypothesis that a putative pyrG antitermination regulatory protein might act by binding to the conserved GGGC sequence at the 5' end of the pyrG transcript and to the conserved GCUCCC sequence that forms the 5' strand of the terminator stem-loop when cytidine nucleotides are at low concentrations. Such binding would prevent the GCUCCC sequence from base pairing with its complementary sequence in the 3' strand of the terminator, resulting in antitermination. We tested this hypothesis by construction of a mutant pyrG'-lacZ fusion in which the 6-nt sequence from +16 to +21, which we had already shown could be replaced by other nucleotides in strain QM406, was replaced with a second copy of the GCUCCC sequence. We reasoned that such a transcript might bind to the antiterminator protein under conditions of cytidine starvation and prevent or reduce normal antitermination, since the site that binds the GCUCCC sequence in the terminator would already be occupied. That is, we expected expression of the corresponding pyrG'-lacZ fusion (strain QM422) to be low under derepressing conditions. This expectation was met (Table 2). Expression of ß-galactosidase during growth on orotate was only 65 Miller units, a value much lower than seen in strain QM401 or most other strains that displayed normal regulation. This level was higher than that generally observed with most repressed strains, however, which suggests that correct binding of the pyrG leader to the regulatory protein could occur some of the time, even when a competing copy of the GCUCCC sequence was present. Expression of pyrG in QM422 under repressing conditions was extremely low; we suggest the following explanation for this. If high levels of cytidine nucleotides act simply by causing the hypothetical regulatory protein to fail to bind the pyrG leader RNA, expression of strain QM422 grown in the presence of cytidine might be expected to be similar to that of strain QM401 grown under the same conditions. However, we believe that the levels of cytidine nucleotides inside cells grown with cytidine are not high enough to repress pyrG expression in QM401 to the maximum possible extent. Rather, some of the putative regulatory protein probably remains bound, causing some residual antitermination. In strain QM422, this remaining antitermination is largely prevented by the extra GCUCCC sequence in the pyrG leader.
To test whether the putative antitermination protein might also bind to the third conserved sequence in the pyrG leader, we constructed fusion strain QM423, in which this sequence, GGGAGC, replaced the normal sequence at nt +16 to +21, i.e., was substituted in the same position as that of the GCUCCC sequence in QM422. Expression of the pyrG'-lacZ fusion and repression by cytidine in QM423 were essentially the same as in the wild-type strain, QM401 (Table 2).
Our experiments demonstrate that two short cis-acting elements of the pyrG leader mRNA are crucial for normal regulation of the gene by cytidine. These are the GGGC/U sequence at the 5' end of the mRNA and the GCUCCC sequence that forms the first 6 bp on the 5' side of the stem of the pyrG leader transcription terminator. It is likely that the GGGAGC sequence in the 3' strand of the terminator stem is conserved in various species simply because it forms the complement to the essential GCUCCC sequence. No nucleotides or secondary structures between these two segments are required for normal regulation. These conclusions do not fully define the mechanism of antitermination control of pyrG expression, but they allow many potential mechanisms to be excluded, particularly those mechanisms that do not involve the participation of trans-acting regulatory proteins. The excluded mechanisms are as follows. (i) There is no reasonable upstream RNA antiterminator stem-loop in the pyrG leader as seen for the B. subtilis pyr (13) and trp (1) operons. One can imagine base pairing of the GGG segment (nt +1 to +3) with the CCC segment in the second conserved region acting as an antiterminator, but the stability of such a structure would be so much lower than that of the terminator stem-loop that it could not form an effective antiterminator. (ii) There is no possibility for a coupled transcription-translation regulatory mechanism as found with the Escherichia coli pyrBI or pyrE-rph operon (5), because there is no open reading frame or ribosome binding site in the essential elements of the pyrG leader. (iii) The sequence of the 5' end of the pyrG leader is also incompatible with a regulatory mechanism involving UTP-sensitive reiterative RNA synthesis, as described for E. coli pyrBI (6) and codBA (9), or a variant of it that would involve CTP-dependent reiterative RNA synthesis. (iv) Finally, a mechanism involving nucleotide pool-sensitive transcriptional start site switching, as described for the pyrC and pyrD genes in E. coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (10, 14), seems implausible. One could imagine that the site of pyrG transcription initiation might shift from the G at +1 to the C at +4 under conditions of low-GTP and high-CTP pools. This would prevent any possible base pairing of the 5' end of the mRNA with the GCUCCC sequence in the terminator stem and allow for greater termination. However, as noted above, this potential antiterminator structure is too weak to be effective. Furthermore, such a mechanism is not compatible with the properties of several of our mutant pyrG-lacZ fusions.
Our experiments on the cis-acting elements required for antitermination control of the pyrG gene are most readily explained by a mechanism in which these elements interact specifically with a trans-acting regulatory protein that governs antitermination in response to the intracellular cytidine nucleotide pool size. The simplest mode of action for such a protein would be that it binds to the pyrG leader mRNA at both the 5'-GGGC sequence and the GCUCCC sequence of the terminator stem-loop when the CTP concentration is low. This binding would prevent the GCUCCC sequence from base pairing with its complementary sequence in the 3' stem of the terminator, leading to antitermination and read-through of the pyrG coding region. High concentrations of CTP are predicted to cause the antitermination protein to fail to bind to the pyrG mRNA and allow formation of the terminator stem-loop. This simple model explains most of our observations in this report, but a few are not accounted for. Specifically, the model does not explain why replacement of the first three G residues by A residues (Table 1, strains QM403, QM404, QM405, and QM416) caused almost total loss of pyrG expression, whereas replacement of the C nucleotide at +4 with an A nucleotide (strain QM412) gave relatively high, unregulated expression. If the GGGC sequence were needed only for binding of a regulatory protein, all five mutations would have been expected to give similar phenotypes. The GGGC sequence at the 5' end of the pyrG transcript appears to be involved in antitermination in a more complex fashion than simply as a determinant of binding of a regulatory protein. Accordingly, we propose that the putative antitermination protein recognizes and binds to the two pyrG leader sequences but that it may remain bound during transcription and could interact with RNA polymerase and possibly other transcription factors, such as NusA and the template DNA, as well. The mode of action of such a protein might resemble some aspects of the action of the phage lambda N or Q antitermination protein (2). The action of cytidine nucleotides would be to control the extent to which the GCUCCC sequence is prevented from binding to its complementary sequence in the 3' stem of the terminator, leading to antitermination. We suggest that this interaction is modulated not only by CTP levels but also by interactions with the GGGC sequence of the pyrG mRNA.
There is at present no direct evidence for the existence of this proposed trans-acting pyrG regulatory protein. A search for the gene encoding such a protein, using transposon mutagenesis, is under way in our laboratory. If such a gene can be identified and the protein it encodes can be isolated, direct testing of our proposed antitermination mechanism will be possible.
This research was supported by Public Health Service grant GM47112 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
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paradigm updated. Mol. Microbiol. 18:191-200.[CrossRef][Medline]
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