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J Bacteriol, April 1998, p. 1855-1861, Vol. 180, No. 7
0021-9193/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Characterization of a Novel Member of the DegS-DegU
Regulon Affected by Salt Stress in Bacillus subtilis
Véronique
Dartois,*
Michel
Débarbouillé,
Frank
Kunst, and
Georges
Rapoport
Unité de Biochimie Microbienne, URA
1300 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut
Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France
Received 7 October 1997/Accepted 22 January 1998
As a soil bacterium also found in estuarine and marine habitats,
Bacillus subtilis has evolved various sensing and
adaptation systems in order to face salt stress conditions. Among these
regulatory mechanisms is the DegS-DegU signal transduction system,
which was previously shown to be stimulated by high salt
concentrations. A search for promoters regulated in response to salt
stress led to the identification of wapA, encoding a
wall-associated protein, which is strongly expressed at low salt
concentrations and almost completely repressed in the presence of 0.7 M
disodium succinate. Repression of wapA transcription by
salt stress was shown to require the phosphorylated form of DegU.
Moreover, DegU-mediated repression of wapA occurred only in
high-salt medium. Alignment between the control region of
wapA and other DegU-regulated promoters allowed the
identification of a putative DegU target sequence,
AGAAN11TTCAG. Mutation/deletion analyses of the
wapA promoter region confirmed the role of the putative
DegU control site in repression of wapA transcription at
high salt concentrations and revealed a second site of repression
located downstream from the transcription start site. Since residual
negative control was observed at this second site in the absence of
DegU, it seems likely that an additional repressor acts on the
wapA control region to further downregulate wapA transcription under salt stress conditions.
*
Corresponding author. Present address: MicroGenomics,
Inc., 11211 Sorrento Valley Rd., Suite Q, San Diego, CA 92121. Phone: (619) 457 8387. Fax: (619) 457 8375. E-mail:
vdartois{at}microgenomics.com.
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