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Journal of Bacteriology, April 2004, p. 2476-2480, Vol. 186, No. 8
0021-9193/04/$08.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.186.8.2476-2480.2004
Copyright © 2004, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Departamento de Microbiología, Facultad de Ciencias Bioquímicas y Farmacéuticas, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Rosario, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, 2000 Rosario, Argentina,1 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 606122
Received 7 October 2003/ Accepted 7 January 2004
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In several two-component systems (1, 2, 5, 9, 16, 22, 23) phosphorylation of the response regulator either is essential or greatly increases its binding affinity for the promoter regions of its target genes. For some response regulators, this activation is achieved by promoting cooperative oligomerization (3, 8, 10, 11, 13, 20, 22). On the other hand, for effectors such as PhoB (4, 12), Fix J (11), NarL (28), and SpoOA (18) phosphorylation induces a conformational change in the protein relieving an autoinhibitory effect. Here we report that, when overexpressed, PhoP is able to activate its target genes independently from its phosphorylation status, in a concentration-dependent manner. We demonstrate that protein-protein interaction is enhanced by phosphorylation, although it can also occur with the unphosphorylated form of PhoP.
PhoP overexpression induces pcgF in the absence of PhoQ function. We expressed PhoP as a His-tagged fusion protein from plasmid pPB1019H, constructed by cloning the PCR product obtained using primers 5'-phoP-F (3'-GAGGATCCATATGATGCGCGTACTGG-5') and 3'-phoP-R (3'-TCCAAGCTTAGTGGTGGTGGTGGTGGTGGCGCAATTCAAAAAGATATC-5'), between the BamHI and the HindIII sites of pUHE21-2lacIq (26). Surprisingly, pPB1019H was able to induce the expression of pcgF::MudJ (a representative PhoP-activated gene [pag]) (27) in both a phoP and a phoQ strain, under activating (Luria-Bertani medium [LB]) or repressing (LB plus 50 mM MgCl2) conditions for the PhoP/PhoQ system. This was in sharp contrast to the result obtained when using pEG9014 (a low-level PhoP expression plasmid) (26), where pcgF activation was dependent upon its cognate kinase PhoQ and repressed by extracellular Mg2+. As expected, expression of PhoQ from pEG9050 (26) restored pcgF activation in the phoQ but not in the phoP strain. In order to eliminate the His tag as a possible cause of this effect, plasmid pPB1019 was constructed by replacing the NsiI-HindIII fragment of pPB1019H with the corresponding fragment excised and purified from pEG9014 (26). As a result, pPB1019 differed from pEG9014 in only three extra nucleotides introduced into the spacing region between the putative ribosomal binding site and the start codon of phoP. pPB1019 showed the same PhoQ- and Mg2+-independent complementation behavior as did pPB1019H, indicating that the His tag was not responsible for this phenotype. Identical results were obtained with several pags tested (data not shown). Interestingly, a strong band corresponding to PhoP was detectable only by Coomassie blue-stained sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) when the cell extract from the pPB1019-complemented strain was analyzed. On the other hand, expression of the PhoP protein from the pEG9014-complemented strain was detectable only by Western blot analysis using polyclonal anti-PhoP antiserum (see Fig. 4).
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FIG. 4. Determination of plasmid-dependent PhoP intracellular concentration. (A and B) Whole-cell extracts obtained from cultures of Salmonella strain EG9558 (phoP7953::Tn10 pcgF9281::MudJ) harboring pEG9014 (A) or pPB1019 (B), grown in LB, and induced with IPTG as indicated were analyzed by SDS-PAGE (12% polyacrylamide gels), followed by transfer to nitrocellulose and development using rabbit polyclonal anti-PhoP antibodies. PhoP-H6 was also loaded and used as a standard to calculate the PhoP concentration. The immunoblots are representative of five independent experiments. (C) The intracellular PhoP concentration was calculated for Salmonella strain EG9558 (phoP7953::Tn10 pcgF9281::MudJ) harboring either pPB1019 or pEG9014, grown in LB, and induced with different IPTG concentrations as indicated.
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FIG. 2. PhoP overexpression can compensate for PhoQ- and Mg2+-dependent induction of pcgF. ß-Galactosidase activity was determined from Salmonella strain EG9558 (phoP7953::Tn10 pcgF9281::MudJ) or PB1209 (phoQ5996::Tn10 pcgF9281::MudJ), harboring either pEG9014 or pPB1019 and grown in LB (A), harboring pPB1019 and grown in LB or LB plus 50 mM MgCl2 (B), and harboring either pPB1019 or pPB1019DA and grown in LB (C) and induced with different IPTG concentrations as indicated. The results are the averages of three independent assays performed in duplicate.
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PhoPD52A is able to promote gene transcription. We next examined pcgF induction when overexpressing a PhoPD52A mutant (6) that is not phosphorylated (Fig. 2C). phoP was replaced by phoPD52A in pPB1019, resulting in pPB1019DA (which achieves high levels of PhoP expression similar to those obtained from pPB1019 [Fig. 1C, lane 4]). pPB1019DA was introduced by electroporation into pcgF::MudJ and pcgF::MudJ phoQ::Tn10 strains. pcgF expression was identical in the two genetic backgrounds and indistinguishable from that obtained when using pPB1019 under repressing conditions (Fig. 2C). As expected, expression of PhoPD52A from plasmid pEG9014DA did not complement a phoP strain (data not shown). Our results indicate that, even when PhoP phosphorylation is eliminated, overexpression of PhoP can activate pcgF.
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FIG. 1. PhoP overexpression induces pcgF in a PhoQ-independent manner. (A and B) ß-Galactosidase activity from Salmonella strain EG9558 (phoP7953::Tn10 pcgF9281::MudJ) (A) or EG9531 (phoQ5996::Tn10 pcgF9281::MudJ) (B), harboring plasmid pUHE-21-2 (vector), pPB1019H, pEG9014, pEG9050 (pPHOQ), or pPB1019, grown in LB or in LB plus 50 mM MgCl2, and induced with 0.5 mM IPTG, was measured as described previously (24). The results are the averages of three independent assays performed in duplicate; error bars correspond to the standard deviations. (C) Protein profile of whole-cell extracts (30 µg of total protein/well) analyzed by SDS-PAGE with gels stained with Coomassie brilliant blue. Salmonella strain EG9558 (phoP7953::Tn10 pcgF9281::MudJ) harbored the vector (lane 1), pEG9014 (lane 2), pPB1019 (lane 3), pPB1019DA (lane 4), or pEG9014DA (lane 5), respectively, where DA represents a substitution of alanine for aspartic acid at position 52 in PhoP. MWS, protein broad-range molecular mass standards (New England Biolabs). Numbers at left are molecular masses in kilodaltons.
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FIG. 3. Physiological modulation of PhoP intracellular concentration. (A) Whole-cell extracts (30 µg of total protein/well) from Salmonella wild-type or phoQ or phoP strains grown in LB (-) or in LB plus 50 mM MgCl2 (+) were analyzed by SDS-PAGE (12% polyacrylamide gels), followed by transfer to nitrocellulose and development using rabbit polyclonal anti-PhoP antibodies. Different quantities of purified PhoP-H6 protein were also loaded and used as references to calculate the PhoP concentration. The immunoblot shown is a representative result from five independent experiments. (B) PhoP intracellular concentration was calculated for Salmonella wild-type or phoQ strains grown in LB (-) or in LB plus 50 mM MgCl2 (+). The results are the averages of five independent assays, and the error bars correspond to the standard deviations.
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PhoP phosphorylation enhances protein-protein interaction.
We investigated whether in vitro phosphorylation of purified PhoP influenced its self-association as previously reported for FixJ, NtrC, PhoB, NarL, and ArcA (11, 13, 19, 28). PhoP or PhoPD52A was incubated at a final concentration of 5 µM in 50 mM KCl-20 mM MgCl2-20% glycerol-0.05% Tween 20-50 mM HEPES (pH 8.0) at 25°C for 3 h with or without 25 mM acetyl phosphate (Fig. 5A). A 1 mM concentration of disuccinimidyl suberate (DSS; Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, Mo.) was subsequently added for 30 min at 25°C. In this experiment approximately 80% of PhoP was phosphorylated, as determined by reversed-phase high-pressure liquid chromatography (16). The presence of an immunoreactive band that migrated as a dimer of PhoP was observed only when phosphorylated PhoP was present in the assay mixture (Fig. 5A, lane 1). Besides, Fig. 5B indicates that self-association also occurs in the absence of PhoP phosphorylation, although dimerization is favored by phosphorylation. Unphosphorylated PhoP required concentrations of
30 µM for dimer formation, and less dimer was produced. This level of expression of PhoP could be reached only in pPB1019-overexpressing cells and not in the wild-type 14028s strain under our experimental conditions. Purified PhoPD52A was soluble only at concentrations below 7 µM, and so we were unable to include it in this analysis.
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FIG. 5. PhoP self-association depends on concentration or phosphorylation. (A) Affinity-purified PhoP or PhoPD52A (5 µM) previously incubated with or without acetyl phosphate (AcPi) was subjected to cross-linking with DSS. (B) Increasing concentrations of purified PhoP previously incubated with (+) or without (-) acetyl phosphate (AcPi) were subjected to cross-linking with DSS. Samples were analyzed by SDS-PAGE (12% polyacrylamide gels), followed by transfer to nitrocellulose and development using rabbit polyclonal anti-PhoP antibodies. Numbers at left are molecular masses in kilodaltons.
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In summary, our results clearly show that phosphorylation is not an absolute requirement for PhoP to induce expression of its target genes, although under physiological conditions it is required for PhoP activation (21, 27). Therefore, it is reasonable to postulate that overexpression can substitute for phosphorylation simply by mass action that favors an interaction among monomers at high PhoP concentrations. It is this form, which appears to be a dimer, that exhibits enhanced affinity for DNA. In this context, it was previously shown that UhpA could activate transcription in the absence of the phosphodonor UhpB if present at a sufficiently high concentration. It was postulated that this effect correlated with the occupancy of multiple sites with different affinities in the target DNA sequences (9). In the case of OmpR, binding of the unphosphorylated protein to adjacent sites may be cooperative and cooperative interactions might be further stimulated upon phosphorylation (17). Chen et al. proposed that, for PhoP in Bacillus subtilis, both phosphorylation and dimerization are essential for the regulator to be transcriptionally active (8). This appears not to be the case for Salmonella PhoP, as present analysis of the PhoP-binding motif reveals a consensus single direct repeat in the promoter region of the pags that are directly regulated by PhoP (21, 25).
Lastly, our results highlight that, although response regulators are classified into subfamilies on the basis of structural similarities, their detailed reaction mechanisms even within the subfamily can be quite distinct.
This work was supported by grants from Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Argentina), Fundación Antorchas, the Third World Academy of Sciences (Trieste, Italy), CONICET, and Ministerio de Salud de la República Argentina. L.J.K. is supported by GM-58746 from the National Institutes of Health and MCB-0243085 from the National Science Foundation. E.G.V. is a career investigator of the National Research Council (CONICET, Argentina), and S.L. and M.E.C. are fellows of the same institution. M.E.C. was awarded an ASM International Fellowship to perform some of these studies in the laboratory of L.J.K. at Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland. F.C.S. is a member of the Rosario National University Research Council (CIUNR) and CONICET; he is also an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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