Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (Sep 2014)

Bacterial sigma factors as targets for engineered or synthetic transcriptional control

  • Lakshmi eTripathi,
  • Yan eZhang,
  • Zhanglin eLin

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2014.00033
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2

Abstract

Read online

Sigma (σ) factors are the predominant constituents of transcription regulation in bacteria. σ factors recruit the core RNA polymerase (RNAP) to recognize promoters with specific DNA sequences. Recently engineering of transcriptional regulators has become a significant tool for strain engineering. The present review summarizes the recent advances in σ factor based engineering or synthetic design. The manipulation of σ factors presents insights into the bacterial stress tolerance and metabolite productivity. We envision more synthetic design based on σ factors that can be used to tune the regulatory network of bacteria.

Keywords