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Journal of Bacteriology, July 2006, p. 5325-5330, Vol. 188, No. 14
0021-9193/06/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JB.00104-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Department of Microbiology, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602
Received 19 January 2006/ Accepted 25 April 2006
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Although combating oxidative stress is a key to H. pylori survival, we know little about regulation of expression of the specific genes involved. To aid in understanding the overall oxygen stress-modulated gene expression in H. pylori, we compared the global gene expression of H. pylori grown at 2% versus 12% oxygen by using a microarray approach. Preliminary results from these studies showed an up-expression of expected genes, such as thioredoxin reductase, thioredoxin, superoxide dismutase (SOD), and thiol peroxidase, all enzymes known to be directly involved in combating oxidative stress. In addition, among the other highly up-regulated genes was one encoding the Fe-S cluster synthesis protein NifS. We observed an approximately fivefold up-regulation of the nifS-nifU operon (hp0220 and hp0221) after a 2-h shift from 2% to 12% O2 (Abstr. 105th Gen. Meet. Am. Soc. Microbiol., abstr. K-063, 2005). NifS belongs to the crucial IscS family of proteins, which is involved in Fe-S cluster formation (12). The NifS proteins provide sulfur donation via an L-cysteine desulfurase activity. The cluster maturation proteins are usually considered to be essential "housekeeping" proteins, as nearly all organisms have multiple proteins that require Fe-S clusters for their function. Thus, inactivation of the H. pylori nifS-nifU operon (hp0220 and hp0221) was previously shown to be lethal to the bacterium (12, 13).
In this study we performed promoter-reporter gene fusions to determine the regulation of the nifS-nifU operon under conditions of excess oxygen or iron. We first mapped the 5' end of the nifS-nifU transcript by using a 28-base-long oligonucleotide specific to 5' nifS (Fig. 1). A primer extension product between 66 and 82 bases long was generated, and the 5' end of the transcript was concluded to be approximately 38 to 54 bases upstream of the ATG start codon of nifS (hp0220). For the reporter gene fusions, a 300-bp fragment (spanning both the intergenic region of hp0219 and hp0220 and part of hp0219) comprising all of the promoter elements of nifS-nifU was amplified by PCR using the forward primer NIFPF 5'-GAGCTCGCCCATTATCATTACCGCTCT-3' and the reverse primer NIFPR 5'-CGCCGGCGGATCCTCAAAAATTTTACATAG-3', with the SacI site in the forward primer and the BamHI site in the reverse primer italicized. The promoter fragment was introduced upstream of a 980-bp promoterless xylE gene (encoding catechol 2,3-dioxygenase) from Pseudomonas putida. The 1,280-bp PnifS-xylE cassette was cloned into either the previously described plasmid peu39 cm (1) or the H. pylori shuttle vector pHel3 (19) to study the regulation chromosomally or extrachromosomally, respectively. The plasmids with the fusions were transformed into wild-type HP43504 or into an isogenic fur mutant to study the role of Fur in the regulation of the nifS-nifU operon.
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FIG. 1. Primer extension analysis of the nifS transcript. A primer extension system, the avian myeloblastosis virus reverse transcriptase kit (catalog no. E3030; Promega), was used to obtain the primer extension product of the nifS transcript. A 28-mer oligonucleotide (5'-TAAATTCGTTGTAACAAGGTTAATATTC-3') complementary to the bases spanning the ATG start codon (TTG for nifS) was end labeled with [32P]ATP, and RNA from H. pylori was used as the substrate for the primer extension reaction. The reaction was carried out according to the manufacturer's instructions, and the products were subjected to PAGE (6% polyacrylamide). Lane 1, primer extension product of the nifS transcript; lane 2, DNA ladder.
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FIG. 2. XylE activities as a measure of nifS induction under various stress conditions. Cells were grown at 2% partial pressure oxygen until logarithmic phase (an optical density at 600 nm of 0.4); oxygen was added to 12% partial pressure in a closed gas system, or the 2% O2 atmosphere was maintained but the medium (see the text) was supplemented with 500 µM FeCl3 or with a 75 µM concentration of the iron chelator 2,2-dipyridyl, to study the effects of oxygen stress, iron, and iron starvation on transcription of the gene. WT-xylE and fur-xylE, PnifS-xylE fusion in the hp405 region of the genome; pHel3-xylE, PnifS-xylE fusion on the shuttle vector. Simultaneous experiments were conducted in wild-type and fur mutant strain backgrounds. The means and standard deviations from five independent experiments are shown here, with three replicates for each experiment (a total of 15 samples for each mean). All wild-type results for both the added-O2 and the iron stress conditions are significantly greater than for the 2% O2 conditions (P < 0.01), and the results for the fur strain are significantly less (P < 0.01) than for the same stress condition (12% O2 or supplemented iron) for the wild-type strain. The iron chelator conditions are not statistically different from the 2% O2 conditions. One unit of xylE activity is equal to 1 µmol of oxidized catechol/min/109 cells.
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-32P]ATP (catalog no. PB10168; Amersham) using T4 polynucleotide kinase (Promega). Fur-PnifS binding assays were carried out in standard electrophoretic mobility shift assay buffer (20). Pure Fur (200 nM) plus (iron-substituted) MnCl2 bound the 300-bp PnifS fragment (Fig. 4A). The effect of 150 µM EDTA (Fig. 4B) on the Fur-PnifS binding complex was assessed. We observed that EDTA prevented the binding of Fur to PnifS even at the highest tested concentration (1,000 nM) of Fur. The results indicate that iron-loaded Fur is the active form. We next performed a titration assay of Fur-PnifS binding by using a fixed concentration (50 pM) of radiolabeled nifS promoter and various concentrations (0 to 1,000 nM) of Fur in the presence of 100 µM MnCl2. An initially linear increase in binding was observed with the added incremental increases in Fur concentration; the binding was saturated at about 1,000 nM. The half-dissociation concentration (Kd) at which 50% of the DNA was bound was calculated to be 360 nM (Fig. 4C). For comparison, the binding affinity of apo-Fur (in the absence of iron or manganese) for the H. pylori sodB promoter is 260 nM (10). We consistently observed Fur binding to sequences that included up to 300 bp upstream of the start codon, but no Fur binding was observed when a sequence containing the 138-bp region immediately upstream was used (Fig. 4D).
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FIG. 3. Purification of H. pylori Fur. The entire gene (hp1027) from H. pylori encoding Fur was introduced downstream of the T7 promoter in the pET21A vector (Novagen) and overexpressed in E. coli BL21 Rosetta by induction with 0.5 mM IPTG (isopropyl-ß-D-thiogalactopyranoside) (Sigma) at 30°C for 3 h. The cytoplasmic protein from crude extracts prepared from the IPTG-induced cells was obtained by ultracentrifugation (45,000 rpm for 2 h). The purification was performed by fast-protein liquid chromatography; the cytoplasmic protein was first passed through a HiTrap SP column for ion-exchange-based purification with a salt gradient of 50 mM to 1,000 mM NaCl (obtained by using buffer A [50 mM sodium phosphate-50 mM NaCl, pH 8.0] and buffer B [50 mM sodium phosphate-1,000 mM NaCl, pH 8.0]). Peak fractions containing Fur protein (from the ion-exchange procedure) were collected and further purified based on size exclusion by using a Sephacryl-200 column (buffer C [50 mM sodium phosphate-200 mM NaCl, pH 8.0]). UN, uninduced; IN, induced with 0.5 mM IPTG; Fur, purified Fur; M, molecular mass marker (masses, reading down from the top band, are 97.4, 66.2, 45.0, 31.5, 21.0, and 14.4 kDa).
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FIG. 4. Electrophoretic mobility shift assay. The Fur-PnifS interaction was studied with the 300-bp radiolabeled PnifS fragment and pure Fur protein. PnifS (50 pM) was assayed with various MnCl2 concentrations and constant Fur levels (A) or with increasing concentrations of Fur (0 to 1,000 nM) in the presence of 150 µM EDTA (B). Fur-PnifS binding was determined with 100 µM MnCl2 and various concentrations of Fur; the percent DNA bound was determined by phosphorimager scanning, and then the Kd value was calculated from all of the (bound and unbound) values (C). A 150-bp interior region of the gene encoding the 16S rRNA and pure thioredoxin reductase, representing nonspecific DNA and protein, respectively, were used as controls; these exhibited no shift (data not shown). The region of Fur recognition in PnifS (in the presence of MnCl2) was narrowed by use of a 138-bp non-Fur-binding fragment upstream of the start codon rather than the 300-bp fragment used in other experiments. The inability of this fragment to bind Fur is shown (D).
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To compare the affinity of PnifS-Fur to other promoters, we carried out a competition assay using the flgE and napA promoters, which were previously shown to be repressed by apo-Fur (9, 23). The competition assay was performed in the presence of MnCl2 (Fig. 5A) using 400 nM Fur, 50 pM labeled PnifS, and a range (0 to 400 pM) of 200-bp flgE or napA promoter DNA. We observed that at about a 4x excess concentration (compared to PnifS), PflgE reduced the binding of Fur to PnifS by more than 50%. There was little or no inhibition of PnifS-Fur interaction by PnapA. Cooksley et al. (4) showed that napA in H. pylori is repressed by Fur but that expression is induced when the cells are grown in medium supplemented with FeCl3, and in a fur mutant strain napA expression did not depend on iron levels (4). In our study, the competition experiment was performed in the presence of MnCl2 (a preferable substitute for iron, as previously described; see reference 11), which is needed for Fur-PnifS binding. For napA regulation, it seems that apo-Fur is the active form that recognizes the promoter; hence, it is not surprising that the napA promoter could not successfully inhibit the Fur-PnifS complex. When a similar experiment was performed with cold PnifS as the competitor DNA, the binding of Fur to radiolabeled PnifS was decreased to approximately 25% (compared to binding in the absence of competitor) in the presence of a 200 pM concentration of competitor promoter (Fig. 5B); this suggests a specific binding of Fur to PnifS.
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FIG.5. (A) Competitive effects of PflgE and PnapA on Fur-PnifS (PnifS at 50 pM) binding in the presence of 100 µM MnCl2 determined by using increasing concentrations (0 to 400 pM) of competitor promoter DNA. (B) Effects of cold PnifS (0 to 200 pM) on Fur binding to radiolabeled nifS promoter DNA.
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In our study, we report that the nifS-nifU operon of H. pylori is up-regulated under high oxygen or high iron conditions; the observed up-regulation was not observed in an isogenic fur mutant. The oxygen effect is most likely related to the recently reported damaging effect of O2 and related ROI on the release of free iron from Fe-containing proteins in H. pylori (25). The net result is a significant increase of intracellular free iron, which we expect would be recognized by Fur. The connection between increased oxygen stress and NifS expression is presumably related to the increased need for Fe-S cluster synthesis at a time when Fe-S proteins are oxidatively damaged. Further analysis of the nifS promoter and other H. pylori iron-regulated promoters is needed for understanding of the full role of Fur.
This work was supported by NIH grant 1-RO1-DK60061 to R.J.M.
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