transcriptional regulation
- Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyMapping the Global Network of Extracellular Protease Regulation in Staphylococcus aureus
The complex regulatory role of the proteases necessitates very tight coordination and control of their expression. While this process has been well studied, a major oversight has been the consideration of proteases as a single entity rather than as 10 enzymes produced from four different promoters. As such, in this study, we comprehensively characterized the regulation of each protease promoter, discovering vast differences in the way...
- Research Article | Host-Microbe BiologyFunctional Characterization of Entamoeba histolytica Argonaute Proteins Reveals a Repetitive DR-Rich Motif Region That Controls Nuclear Localization
The protozoan parasite Entamoeba histolytica, which causes amebiasis and affects over 50 million people worldwide, contains an important RNAi pathway for gene silencing. Gene silencing via the RNAi pathway is mediated by the Argonaute (Ago) proteins. However, we lack knowledge on Ago function(s) in this nonmodel system. In this paper, we discovered that three...
- Resource Report | Synthetic BiologyPlasmids for Independently Tunable, Low-Noise Expression of Two Genes
Microbiologists often express foreign proteins in bacteria in order study them or to use bacteria as a microbial factory. Usually, this requires controlling the number of foreign proteins expressed in each cell, but for many common protein expression systems, it is difficult to “tune” protein expression without large cell-to-cell variation in expression levels (called “noise” in protein expression). This work describes two protein...
- Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyMultiple Evolutionarily Conserved Domains of Cap2 Are Required for Promoter Recruitment and Iron Homeostasis Gene Regulation
Iron is an essential micronutrient for living cells. Candida albicans, the predominant human fungal pathogen, thrives under diverse environments with vastly different iron levels in the mammalian host. Therefore, to tightly control iron homeostasis, C. albicans has evolved a set of transcriptional...
- Editor's Pick Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyConstruction and Use of a Recyclable Marker To Examine the Role of Major Facilitator Superfamily Protein Members in Candida glabrata Drug Resistance Phenotypes
Export of drugs is a problem for chemotherapy of infectious organisms. A class of membrane proteins called the major facilitator superfamily contains a large number of proteins that often elevate drug resistance when overproduced but do not impact this phenotype when the gene is removed. We wondered if this absence of a phenotype for a disruption allele might be due to the redundancy of this group of membrane proteins. We describe the...
- Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyTranscriptional Regulation of Carnitine Catabolism in Pseudomonas aeruginosa by CdhR
Pathogens must metabolize host-derived compounds during infection and properly regulate the responsible pathways. Carnitine is a common eukaryotic-associated quaternary amine compound that can be catabolized by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Here we expand on our understanding of how this metabolic pathway is regulated and provide details on how carnitine catabolism is...
- Research Article | Applied and Environmental SciencePlasticity of the MFS1 Promoter Leads to Multidrug Resistance in the Wheat Pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici
Disease control through fungicides remains an important means to protect crops from fungal diseases and to secure the harvest. Plant-pathogenic fungi, especially Zymoseptoria tritici, have developed resistance against most currently used active ingredients, reducing or abolishing their efficacy. While target site modification is the most common resistance mechanism against single modes of action, active efflux of multiple drugs...
- Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyA Quorum-Sensing System That Regulates Streptococcus pneumoniae Biofilm Formation and Surface Polysaccharide Production
Quorum sensing regulates bacterial social behaviors by production, secretion, and sensing of pheromones. In this study, we characterized a new quorum-sensing system of the Rgg/SHP class in S. pneumoniae D39. The system was found to directly induce the expression of a single gene cluster comprising the gene for the SHP pheromone and genes with putative functions in...
- Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyGrf10 and Bas1 Regulate Transcription of Adenylate and One-Carbon Biosynthesis Genes and Affect Virulence in the Human Fungal Pathogen Candida albicans
Candida albicans is a commensal and a common constituent of the human microbiota; however, it can become pathogenic and cause infections in both immunocompetent and immunocompromised people. C. albicans exhibits remarkable metabolic versatility as it can colonize multiple body sites as a commensal...
- Editor's Pick Research Article | Molecular Biology and PhysiologyReconfiguration of Transcriptional Control of Lysine Biosynthesis in Candida albicans Involves a Central Role for the Gcn4 Transcriptional Activator
Microbes evolve rapidly so as to reconfigure their gene expression to adapt to the metabolic demands in diverse environmental niches. Here, we explored how conditions of nutrient deprivation regulate lysine biosynthesis in the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans. We show that although both Saccharomyces...