Frontiers in Microbiology (May 2020)

Identification of XylR, the Activator of Arabinose/Xylose Inducible Regulon in Sulfolobus acidocaldarius and Its Application for Homologous Protein Expression

  • Nienke van der Kolk,
  • Alexander Wagner,
  • Alexander Wagner,
  • Michaela Wagner,
  • Michaela Wagner,
  • Bianca Waßmer,
  • Bettina Siebers,
  • Sonja-Verena Albers

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.01066
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11

Abstract

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The thermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius can use different carbon sources for growth, including the pentoses D-xylose and L-arabinose. In this study, we identified the activator XylR (saci_2116) responsible for the transcriptional regulation of the pentose transporter and pentose metabolizing genes in S. acidocaldarius. A xylR deletion mutant showed growth retardation on D-xylose/L-arabinose containing media and the lack of transcription of the respective ABC transporter. In contrast to so far used promoters for expression in S. acidocaldarius, the xylR responsive promoters have a very low background activity. Finally, two XylR dependent promoters next to the long-established maltose inducible promotor were used to construct a high-throughput expression vector system for S. acidocaldarius to efficiently clone and express proteins in S. acidocaldarius.

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