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Journal of Bacteriology, October 2001, p. 5911-5917, Vol. 183, No. 20
Institut für Biochemie und
Molekularbiologie, Universität Freiburg, D-79104 Freiburg,
Germany,1 and Division of Molecular Cell
Biology, Institute of Molecular Embryology and Genetics, Kumamoto
University, Kuhonji 4-24-1, Kumamoto 862-0976, Japan2
Received 23 April 2001/Accepted 21 June 2001
A key step in the regulation of heat shock genes in
Escherichia coli is the stress-dependent degradation of
the heat shock promoter-specific
0021-9193/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.183.20.5911-5917.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
The C Terminus of
32 Is Not
Essential for Degradation by FtsH


32 subunit of RNA
polymerase by the AAA protease, FtsH. Previous studies implicated the C
termini of protein substrates, including
32, as
degradation signals for AAA proteases. We investigated the role of the
C terminus of
32 in FtsH-dependent degradation by
analysis of C-terminally truncated
32 mutant proteins.
Deletion of the 5, 11, 15, and 21 C-terminal residues of
32 did not affect degradation in vivo or in vitro.
Furthermore, a peptide comprising the C-terminal 21 residues of
32 was not degraded by FtsH in vitro and thus did not
serve as a recognition sequence for the protease, while an unrelated
peptide of similar length was efficiently degraded. The truncated
32 mutant proteins remained capable of associating with
DnaK and DnaJ in vitro but showed intermediate (5-amino-acid deletion) and strong (11-, 15-, and 21-amino-acid deletions) defects in association with RNA polymerase in vitro and biological activity in
vivo. These results indicate an important role for the C terminus of
32 in RNA polymerase binding but no essential role for
FtsH-dependent degradation and association of chaperones.
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Institut
für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie, Universität Freiburg,
Hermann-Herder Str. 7, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany. Phone: 49-761 203 52 22. Fax: 49-761 203 52 57. E-mail:
bukau{at}ruf.uni-freiburg.de.
Present address: Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics,
Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chiba University, Inageku,
Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
Present address: Laboratoire de Microbiologie et de
Génétique, Université Louis Pasteur, CNRS UPRES
A7010, 28 67083 Strasbourg Cedex, France.
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