Nature Communications (Dec 2020)

The bacterial multidrug resistance regulator BmrR distorts promoter DNA to activate transcription

  • Chengli Fang,
  • Linyu Li,
  • Yihan Zhao,
  • Xiaoxian Wu,
  • Steven J. Philips,
  • Linlin You,
  • Mingkang Zhong,
  • Xiaojin Shi,
  • Thomas V. O’Halloran,
  • Qunyi Li,
  • Yu Zhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20134-y
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

Read online

BmrR is a member of the bacterial MerR transcription factor family that regulates the expression of the bacterial efflux pump Bmr. Here, the authors present the cryo-EM structure of a B. subtilis transcription activation complex (TAC) containing the RNA Polymerase (RNAP) core enzyme, σA, promoter DNA and ligand-bound BmrR, which reveals that in contrast to most other transcription factors BmrR does not directly interact with RNAP and instead activates transcription by modulating the shape of the core promoter.