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FixK, a universal regulator of microaerobic growth, controls photosynthesis in Rhodopseudomonas palustris

ABSTRACT: Facultative phototrophic bacteria are excellent models for analyzing the coordination of major metabolic traits including oxidative phosphorylation, photophosphorylation, carbon dioxide fixation and nitrogen fixation. In Rhodobacter sphaeroides and R. capsulatus, a two-component system called RegBA (PrrBA) controls these functions and it has been thought that this redox sensing regulatory system was essential for coordinating electron flow and could not be easily replaced in facultative phototrophs. Here we show that this is not the case and that the oxygen-sensing FixlJ-K system, initially described in rhizobia, controls microaerobic respiration, photophosphorylation and several other metabolic traits in Rhodopseudomonas palustris. A R. palustris fixK mutant grew normally aerobically but was impaired in microaerobic growth. It was also severely impaired in photosynthetic growth and has very little bacteriochlorophyll. Transcriptome analyses indicated that FixK positively regulates heme and bacteriochlorophyll biosynthesis, cbb3 oxidase and NADH dehydrogenase genes, as well as genes for hydrogen uptake, iron oxidation, and aromatic compound degradation. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays showed that FixK binds directly to the promoters of a bacteriochlorophyll biosynthesis operon, a bacteriophytochrome-histidine kinase gene and the fnr-type regulatory gene, aadR. AadR is likely responsible for mediating some indirect effects of FixK on expression of anaerobic genes. These results underscore that physiologically similar bacteria can use very different regulatory strategies to control common major metabolisms.

ORGANISM(S): Rhodopseudomonas palustris

PROVIDER: GSE6742 | GEO | 2010/08/16

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA98979

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Photosynthetic microbes can produce the clean-burning fuel hydrogen using one of natureâ??s most plentiful resources, sunlight 1,2. Anoxygenic photosynthetic bacteria generate hydrogen and ammonia during a process known as biological nitrogen fixation. This reaction is catalyzed by the enzyme nitrogenase and consumes nitrogen gas, ATP and electrons 3. One bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas palustris, has a remarkable ability to obtain electrons from green plant-derived material 4,5 and to efficiently absorb both high and low intensity light energy to form ATP 6. Manipulating R. palustris or a similar organism to produce hydrogen commercially will require us to identify all its genes that contribute to hydrogen production and to understand how this process is regulated in cells. Here we describe mutant strains in which metabolism is redirected such that hydrogen production is uncoupled from nitrogen fixation. Our data indicate that three different single amino acid changes in the transcriptional regulator NifA each yielded strains that produced hydrogen even in the presence of the repressing nitrogen source ammonium and in the absence of specific inducing metabolic signals. We used the mutants to show that, in addition to nitrogenase genes, 18 genes outside of the nitrogenase gene cluster may contribute to hydrogen production. Some of these genes are likely involved in efficient ATP acquisition and in channeling electrons to nitrogenase for reduction of protons to molecular hydrogen. Our results demonstrate that photosynthetic bacteria can be genetically manipulated for sustained production of pure hydrogen in a variety of cultivation conditions in the absence of oxygen, nitrogen or other gases as long as light and an electron donor are supplied. Transcriptome profile of wild type (CGA009) growing photosynthetically in the presence of amonium an acetate was compare with that of 4 different mutants (CGA570, CGA571, CGA572 and CGA574). We did 2 biological replicates per strain.

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FixK, a universal regulator of microaerobic growth, controls photosynthesis in Rhodopseudomonas palustris

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