Open AccessIdentification and characterization of the Bacillus subtilis d ‐glucarate/galactarate utilization operon ycbCDEFGHJ
Author(s) -
Hosoya Shigeo,
Yamane Kunio,
Takeuchi Michio,
Sato Tsutomu
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
fems microbiology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.899
H-Index - 151
eISSN - 1574-6968
pISSN - 0378-1097
DOI - 10.1111/j.1574-6968.2002.tb11180.x
Subject(s) - bacillus subtilis , operon , identification (biology) , characterization (materials science) , chemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , computational biology , biology , biochemistry , bacteria , nanotechnology , genetics , materials science , botany , escherichia coli , gene
In the course of the Bacillus subtilis functional genomics project, an open reading frame called ycbG whose product is classified as a transcriptional regulatory protein with a helix‐turn‐helix motif in the putative d ‐glucarate/galactarate utilization operon ( ycbCDEFGHJ ) was initially screened as the gene disruptant that exhibits a defect that blocked the early stage of sporulation. However, the transcription of ycbCDEFG was extremely highly induced in response to nutrient exhaustion by the disruption of ycbG , but inactivation of the transcription from upstream ycbC in the ycbG mutant restored the sporulation efficiency, suggesting that the inappropriate over‐production of the ycbCDEFG gene products inhibits efficient sporulation. We further analyzed the role of the ycbCDEFGHJ cluster and found that (i) a unit of ycbCDEFGHJ was induced by either d ‐glucarate or d ‐galactarate, and (ii) the cell growth was inhibited by the mutation of the ycbF and ycbH genes, that respectively encode the putative proteins, d ‐glucarate dehydratase and d ‐galactarate dehydratase on plates supplemented with d ‐glucarate and d ‐galactarate, respectively, as the sole carbon source. Our results indicate that the ycbCDEFGHJ genes are involved in the utilization of d ‐glucarate and d ‐galactarate in B. subtilis.