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Journal of Bacteriology, January 2003, p. 688-692, Vol. 185, No. 2
0021-9193/03/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.185.2.688-692.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1048
Received 4 October 2002/ Accepted 24 October 2002
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70-dependent genes and operons to the
54-dependent Ntr system (1). NAC activates operons that catabolize histidine (hut), urea (ure), proline (put), alanine (dad), and cytosine (cod) (11, 13, 16) and represses operons involved in the assimilation of ammonia into glutamate (gdhA and gltBD) (13). In addition, NAC negatively regulates its own expression (7). The mechanisms by which NAC can activate or repress transcription are also diverse. NAC can activate transcription from a variety of positions upstream of RNA polymerase (RNAP) (17), perhaps via distinct contacts with the various subunits of RNAP, as has been shown with other activator proteins, including the LysR family members CatR, TrpI, and OxyR (6, 10, 21). The consensus sequence of the sites where NAC activates transcription is ATA-N6-TNGTAT, and the site can be divided into two functional half-sitesa promoter-distal site involved in the binding of NAC to the DNA and a promoter-proximal site. The promoter-proximal site is important for binding, but also contains information necessary for NAC to be proficient at activating transcription, presumably by inducing a conformational change in the protein (18).
The consensus sequence of the sites at which NAC represses transcription is slightly different, ATAA-N8-GAT. When one of these sites was substituted for an activation site, DNA-binding activity was retained, but NAC bound at this site failed to activate transcription (18). Repression by NAC falls into distinct categories. Repression at nac requires the binding of NAC in a single region upstream from the start of transcription and is thought to act by interfering with the necessary interactions between
54-RNAP and its enhancer-bound activator, NtrC (7). In contrast, repression at gdhA requires two well-separated NAC-binding sites, one upstream and the other downstream from the start of transcription (8). This arrangement of binding sites suggests a mechanism of repression by which NAC molecules bound at the two distinct sites interact.
Positive control (PC) mutants of transcriptional regulators have been isolated for a variety of activators, most notably the catabolite activator protein (4). These mutants retain the ability to bind to DNA, yet fail to activate transcription, and the mutations typically map to portions of the protein that normally make contacts with RNAP (3, 9). A similar class of mutant could exist, negative control (NC) mutants, which would retain all normal functions of the protein but lose the ability to repress transcription. In the case of NAC, two classes of NC mutants could be predicted: those that fail to recognize the slightly different binding site found at operons where transcription is repressed, and those that still bind to these sites normally yet still fail to repress transcription. For the first class, the ability of NAC to activate transcription should be unaffected. For the second class, this ability should only be unaffected if the mechanism for repression can be separated from the mechanism of activation. Here we describe the isolation and characterization of an NC mutant of NAC (NACNC) that belongs to the second class.
NC mutants of NAC are defined here as those mutants that retained the ability to activate transcription at ure and hut, but failed to repress transcription at gdhA. The isolation of such NC mutants involved first the generation of a collection of mutants of NAC that failed to repress gdhA and the subsequent screening of these mutants for the subset that retained the ability to activate transcription. In strains lacking glutamate synthase (GOGAT) activity (gltB or gltD), net synthesis of glutamate requires a high level of expression of glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) (2). Introduction of plasmid pCB1051, which expresses nac constitutively from the lacZ promoter, into strain K. aerogenes KC4728 (nac-204 gltD702) resulted in severe repression of GDH and a consequent inability to grow on minimal medium unless glutamate was added. In addition to this growth phenotype, this strain exhibited NAC-activated levels of histidase and urease and repressed levels of GDH, whereas KC4728 containing only vector plasmid did not (data not shown, but similar to the wild-type or no-NAC values shown in Table 1).
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TABLE 1. Characterization of amino acid substitutions at position L111
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Three classes of mutants were isolated from this procedure. The majority of the mutants tested were either null mutants of nac (these failed to repress gdhA and failed to activate ure) or "reduced expression" mutants of nac (those that showed a reduced ability to repress gdhA and activate ure, and failed to activate hut). A few mutants fit the criteria for NC mutants of NAC. They were impaired in their ability to repress gdhA, yet maintained the ability to activate both ure and hut. These were all isolated from the same pool of mutagenized DNA, so they were not necessarily independent. Each of the five nac mutants contained more than one mutation, but each of them contained a T-to-C change at position 331 of the nac coding sequence, which resulted in a leucine-to-proline change in codon 111 (L111P).
By using GeneEditor site-directed mutagenesis (Promega), we constructed the 19 substitutions at codon 111, and the effects of these mutations on the expression of ure, hut, and gdhA were measured (Table 1). With one exception (L111Y was a null mutant), the collection fell into two categories: wild type (GDH activity <150 nmol of product formed per min per mg of protein) and NC (GDH activity >100 nmol of product formed per min per mg of protein). The change of leucine to another hydrophobic residue or to cysteine or histidine resulted in a wild-type NAC phenotype. The change of leucine to a charged or polar residue or to proline or glycine resulted in a NACNC phenotype.
Of all the substitutions at position 111, NACL111K had the clearest NC phenotype, with strong activation of both urease and histidase and only the two- to threefold repression of GDH that is discussed below. Therefore, NACL111K was used to characterize the NC phenotype further. Plasmids pCB1289 and pCB1305 carry NACWT and NACL111K, respectively, expression of which is under the control of the native nac promoter. Thus, formation of NACWT or NACL111K is controlled by the Ntr system in response to the quality of the nitrogen source in the medium. The two plasmids were introduced into strain KC4727 (nac-204), and the specific activities of several NAC-regulated targets were analyzed under nitrogen-excess and nitrogen-limiting conditions (Table 2). Under conditions of nitrogen limitation, where nac is expressed, NACL111K activated urease and histidase expression, but repressed GDH only threefold.
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TABLE 2. NACWT and NACNC activities at various NAC-dependent targets
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placMu53 allele (in which the nac promoter is fused to lacZ). NACWT repressed the nac promoter 4.6-fold, and NACL111K repressed it nearly as well, 3.6-fold. Thus NACL111K appeared to retain the ability to repress transcription at the nac promoter. The effect at GOGAT was intermediate. Comparing nitrogen-rich and nitrogen-limiting conditions, NACWT repressed GOGAT formation only 3-fold, so it is unclear whether the reduced ability of NACL111K to repress gltBD transcription (1.4-fold) more resembles the slight loss of activation seen at hut or the more severe loss of repression seen at gdhA. Comparing the mutant to the wild type under nitrogen-limited conditions only, a greater effect can be seen: NACWT repressed GOGAT formation nearly sixfold when compared to the null mutant. In contrast, NACL111K repressed GOGAT formation only 1.9-fold under these conditions, suggesting that the expression of gltBD may also be impaired in a manner similar to that of gdhA. Two NAC-binding site motifs are located in the promoter of gltBD (T. J. Goss and R. A. Bender, unpublished observation).
The threefold repression of gdhA by NACL111K is significant. The repression of gdhA expression by NAC requires two NAC-binding sites (8). If the upstream binding site is deleted, all NAC-mediated repression is abolished. If the downstream site is deleted, strong repression is lost, but a weak (approximately threefold) NAC-dependent repression remains. This repression appears to result from NAC's ability to compete with a lysine-sensitive positive effector needed for full gdhA expression (8). To test whether the residual repression of gdhA by NACL111K might be attributed to its interaction with the upstream binding site, we introduced plasmid-borne NACWT and NACL111K into strain KC4989 (nac-1). In this strain, a gdhA promoter that contains only the upstream NAC-binding site is fused to lacZ on a
prophage. NACWT repressed ß-galactosidase expression 1.9-fold, and NACL111K repressed expression to 1.7-fold (data not shown). Thus it would appear that NACL111K can bind to the upstream NAC-binding site in a manner analogous to that of the wild type.
We had no in vivo test for DNA binding at the downstream site at gdhA, so it remained a possibility that NACL111K failed to repress transcription because it failed to bind to the downstream site. Therefore, we purified the wild-type and mutant proteins and tested their abilities to bind DNA in vitro by using gel mobility shift assays. Both NACWT and NACL111K were cloned with six-histidine codons at the carboxy terminus and purified by nickel-affinity chromatography (Qiagen). DNA fragments end labeled with [32P]dATP were incubated with purified NACWT or NACL111K. When increasing concentrations of NACWT-his or NACL111K-his were incubated with DNA fragments containing either the hut promoter or the ure promoter, only one shifted band was seen, which was representative of one NAC dimer bound to the DNA (data not shown).
Figure 1 shows the interaction of NACL111K-his with DNA carrying the gdhA promoter region and the upstream NAC-binding site, but lacking the downstream NAC-binding site. With increasing concentrations of protein, NACWT-his was able to shift the DNA to two slower-migrating complexes (Fig. 1, lanes 2 to 7). NACL111K-his also bound to the upstream binding site (Fig. 1, lanes 8 to 13); however, gel shifts with NACL111K-his resulted in only one discrete band when comparably active protein concentrations were used.
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FIG. 1. Gel mobility shift assay of NACWT and NACNC at the upstream NAC-binding site from gdhA. Increasing amounts of purified NACWT-his (lanes 2 to 7) or NACL111K-his (lanes 8 to 13) were incubated with 128 nM DNA fragment containing the upstream NAC-binding site from gdhA. The NACWT-his and NACL111K-his preparations were found to be 24 and 4.2% active, respectively, in terms of DNA binding (specific activity). Concentrations are reported as the amount of active protein used in the assay. Lanes 1 to 7 contained 0, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 nM active NACWT-his, respectively. Lanes 8 to 13 contained 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 nM NACL111K-his, respectively.
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FIG. 2. Gel mobility shift assay of NACWT and NACNC at the downstream NAC-binding site from gdhA. Increasing amounts of purified NACWT-his (lanes 2 to 7) or NACL111K-his (lanes 8 to 13) were incubated with 128 nM DNA fragment containing the downstream NAC-binding site from gdhA. Lanes 1 to 7 contained 0, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 nM active NACWT-his, respectively. Lanes 8 to 13 contained 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 nM NACL111K-his, respectively.
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FIG. 3. Gel mobility shift assays of NACWT or NACNC with the full-length gdhA promoter. Increasing amounts of purified NACWT-his (lanes 2 to 7) or NACL111K-his (lanes 8 to 13) were incubated with 128 nM DNA fragment containing both NAC-binding sites. Lanes 1 to 7 contained 0, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 nM active NACWT-his, respectively. Lanes 8 to 13 contained 150, 125, 100, 75, 50, and 25 nM NACL111K-his, respectively.
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