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Carbon regulation and the role in nature of the Escherichia coli penicillin acylase ( pac ) gene
Author(s) -
Merino Enrique,
Balbás Paulina,
Recillas Felix,
Becerril Baltazar,
Valle Fernando,
Bolivar Francisco
Publication year - 1992
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 - 10.1111/j.1365-2958.1992.tb01391.x
Subject(s) - catabolite repression , escherichia coli , biology , penicillin amidase , lac operon , gene , phenylacetic acid , reporter gene , biochemistry , gene expression , regulation of gene expression , penicillin , antibiotics , mutant
Summary Quantitative analysis of specific pac mRNA and a lacZ fusion to the 5’‐terminal region of the pac gene demonstrated that both phenylacetic acid induction and catabolite repression by glucose are involved, at the transcriptional level, in the regulation of the pac gene. The studies presented here suggest that this regulation is also present in Escherichia coli transformed strains in which the pac gene was not originally present. Analysis of the nucleotide sequence of the 5′‐terminal region of this gene, with a statistical algorithm, confirms that the putative promoter previously proposed by our group is the most feasible within this region. We demonstrate that penicillin acylase activity can confer on E. coli the ability to use penicillin G as a metabolic substrate, by detaching the phenylacetic group which can be used as a carbon source. Based on these data, the regulation properties of the pac gene studied in this work, and the specificity profile of the penicillin acylase enzyme we suggest a role for it in E. coli as a scavenger enzyme for phenylacetylated compounds.