Frontiers in Microbiology (Apr 2017)
Regulation of Inducible Potassium Transporter KdpFABC by the KdpD/KdpE Two-Component System in Mycobacterium smegmatis
Abstract
Kdp-ATPase is an inducible high affinity potassium uptake system that is widely distributed in bacteria, and is generally regulated by the KdpD/KdpE two-component system (TCS). In this study, conducted on Mycobacterium smegmatis, the kdpFABC (encoding Kdp-ATPase) expression was found to be affected by low concentration of K+, high concentrations of Na+, and/or NH4+ of the medium. The KdpE was found to be a transcriptional regulator that bound to a specific 22-bp sequence in the promoter region of kdpFABC operon to positively regulate kdpFABC expression. The KdpE binding motif was highly conserved in the promoters of kdpFABC among the mycobacterial species. 5′-RACE data indicated a transcriptional start site (TSS) of the kdpFABC operon within the coding sequence of MSMEG_5391, which comprised a 120-bp long 5′-UTR and an open reading frame of the 87-bp kdpF gene. The kdpE deletion resulted in altered growth rate under normal and low K+ conditions. Furthermore, under K+ limiting conditions, a single transcript (kdpFABCDE) spanning kdpFABC and kdpDE operons was observed. This study provided the first insight into the regulation of kdpFABC operon by the KdpD/KdpE TCS in M. smegmatis.
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