Loss of Gre factors leads to phenotypic heterogeneity and cheating in <i>Escherichia coli</i> populations under nitric oxide stress.

ABSTRACT: Nitric oxide (·NO) is one of the toxic metabolites that bacteria can be exposed to within phagosomes. Gre factors, which are also known as transcript cleavage factors or transcription elongation factors, relieve back-tracked transcription elongation complexes by cleaving nascent RNAs, which allows transcription to resume after stalling. Here we discovered that loss of both Gre factors in Escherichia coli, GreA and GreB, significantly compromised ·NO detoxification due to ·NO-induced phenotypic heterogeneity in ΔgreAΔgreB populations, which did not occur in wild-type cultures. Under normal culturing conditions, both wild-type and ΔgreAΔgreB synthesized transcripts uniformly, whereas treatment with ·NO led to bimodal transcript levels in ΔgreAΔgre

SUBMITTER: Sivaloganathan DM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11498084 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature