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A molecular mechanism for the repression of transcription by the H‐NS protein
Author(s) -
Rimsky Sylvie,
Zuber Florent,
Buckle Malcolm,
Buc Henri
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
molecular microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.857
H-Index - 247
eISSN - 1365-2958
pISSN - 0950-382X
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2958.2001.02706.x
Subject(s) - biology , nucleoid , promoter , transcription (linguistics) , nucleoprotein , dna , psychological repression , microbiology and biotechnology , dna binding protein , upstream activating sequence , genetics , gene , transcription factor , gene expression , escherichia coli , linguistics , philosophy
The H‐NS protein is a major component of the bacterial nucleoid and plays a crucial role in the global gene regulation of enteric bacteria. Although H‐NS does not exhibit a high DNA sequence specificity, a number of H‐NS‐responsive promoters have been shown to contain regions of intrinsic DNA curvature located either upstream or downstream of the transcription start point. We have studied H‐NS binding to DNA and in vitro transcriptional regulation by H‐NS at several synthetic promoters with or without curved sequences inserted upstream of the Pribnow box. We show how such inserts determine the final organization of H‐NS‐containing nucleoprotein complexes and how this affects transcription. We refine a two‐step mechanism for the constitution of H‐NS assemblies that are efficient in regulation.