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Journal of Bacteriology, July 2006, p. 5145-5152, Vol. 188, No. 14
0021-9193/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00367-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

RNase E Maintenance of Proper FtsZ/FtsA Ratio Required for Nonfilamentous Growth of Escherichia coli Cells but Not for Colony-Forming Ability

Masaru Tamura,1,2,3 Kangseok Lee,1,{dagger} Christine A. Miller,1 Christopher J. Moore,1 Yukio Shirako,2 Masahiko Kobayashi,3 and Stanley N. Cohen1,4*

Departments of Genetics,1 Medicine, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-5120,4 Asian Natural Environmental Science Center,2 Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan3

Received 14 March 2006/ Accepted 28 April 2006

Inactivation or deletion of the RNase E-encoding rne gene of Escherichia coli results in the growth of bacterial cells as filamentous chains in liquid culture (K. Goldblum and D. Apirion, J. Bacteriol. 146:128-132, 1981) and the loss of colony-forming ability (CFA) on solid media. RNase E dysfunction is also associated with abnormal processing of ftsQAZ transcripts (K. Cam, G. Rome, H. M. Krisch, and J.-P. Bouché, Nucleic Acids Res. 24:3065-3070, 1996), which encode proteins having a central role in septum formation during cell division. We show here that RNase E regulates the relative abundances of FtsZ and FtsA proteins and that RNase E depletion results in decreased FtsZ, increased FtsA, and consequently an altered FtsZ/FtsA ratio. However, while restoration of the level of FtsZ to normal in rne null mutant bacteria reverses the filamentation phenotype, it does not restore CFA. Conversely, overexpression of a related RNase, RNase G, in rne-deleted bacteria restores CFA, as previously reported, without affecting FtsZ abundance. Our results demonstrate that RNase E activity is required to maintain a proper cellular ratio of the FtsZ and FtsA proteins in E. coli but that FtsZ deficiency does not account for the nonviability of cells lacking RNase E.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Genetics, 300 Pasteur Drive, Stanford, CA 94305-5120. Phone: (650) 723-5315. Fax: (650) 725-1536. E-mail: sncohen{at}stanford.edu.

{dagger} Present address: Department of Life Science, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 156-756, Korea.

Journal of Bacteriology, July 2006, p. 5145-5152, Vol. 188, No. 14
0021-9193/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00367-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Shin, E., Go, H., Yeom, J.-H., Won, M., Bae, J., Han, S. H., Han, K., Lee, Y., Ha, N.-C., Moore, C. J., Sohlberg, B., Cohen, S. N., Lee, K. (2008). Identification of Amino Acid Residues in the Catalytic Domain of RNase E Essential for Survival of Escherichia coli: Functional Analysis of DNase I Subdomain. Genetics 179: 1871-1879 [Abstract] [Full Text]  


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