Open AccessRole of mRNA termination in regulation of ermK
Author(s) -
Sukwoo Choi,
S K Kim,
Tae-Ho Oh,
EungChil Choi
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of bacteriology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.652
H-Index - 246
eISSN - 1067-8832
pISSN - 0021-9193
DOI - 10.1128/jb.179.6.2065-2067.1997
Subject(s) - terminator (solar) , biology , mutant , translational regulation , transcription (linguistics) , messenger rna , transcriptional regulation , nonsense mediated decay , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , gene expression , gene , rna , translation (biology) , ionosphere , linguistics , philosophy , physics , astronomy , rna splicing
To study the role of mRNA termination in the regulation of ermK, we introduced mismatches into terminators by in vitro mutagenesis. In wild-type ermK, only truncated transcription products were detected in the absence of induction. In contrast, only the full-length transcript was synthesized in the terminator 1 and terminator 2 double mutants, even in the absence of erythromycin. These results indicate that the expression of ermK is primarily regulated by transcriptional attenuation rather than translational attenuation. We also tested the possible contribution of translational attenuation control to the regulation of ermK by constructing a triple mutant (terminator 1 plus terminator 2 plus the methylase Shine-Dalgarno region). A higher level of beta-galactosidase synthesis was seen in the triple mutant. Therefore, unlike with previously described attenuators, it can be concluded that both transcriptional and translational attenuation contribute to the regulation of ermK, although transcriptional attenuation plays a larger role.