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Analysis of a Ferric Uptake Regulator (Fur) Mutant of Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough

Kelly S. Bender,^1,10, Huei-Che Bill Yen,^1,10 Christopher L. Hemme,^2,3,10 Zamin Yang,^2,10 Zhili He,^2,3,10 Qiang He,^4,10 Jizhong Zhou,^2,3,10 Katherine H. Huang,^5,10 Eric J. Alm,^5,6,10 Terry C. Hazen,^7,10 Adam P. Arkin,^5,8,9,10 and Judy D. Wall^1,10*

Department of Biochemistry, University of Missouri—Columbia, Columbia, Missouri 65211,¹ Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831,² Institute for Environmental Genomics, Department of Botany and Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019,³ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122,⁴ Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720,⁵ Biological Engineering Division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139,⁶ Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720,⁷ Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720,⁸ Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815,⁹ Virtual Institute for Microbial Stress and Survival ^,,

Received 2 February 2007/ Accepted 12 June 2007

Previous experiments examining the transcriptional profile of the anaerobe Desulfovibrio vulgaris demonstrated up-regulation of the Fur regulon in response to various environmental stressors. To test the involvement of Fur in the growth response and transcriptional regulation of D. vulgaris, a targeted mutagenesis procedure was used for deleting the fur gene. Growth of the resulting fur mutant (JW707) was not affected by iron availability, but the mutant did exhibit increased sensitivity to nitrite and osmotic stresses compared to the wild type. Transcriptional profiling of JW707 indicated that iron-bound Fur acts as a traditional repressor for ferrous iron uptake genes (feoAB) and other genes containing a predicted Fur binding site within their promoter. Despite the apparent lack of siderophore biosynthesis genes within the D. vulgaris genome, a large 12-gene operon encoding orthologs to TonB and TolQR also appeared to be repressed by iron-bound Fur. While other genes predicted to be involved in iron homeostasis were unaffected by the presence or absence of Fur, alternative expression patterns that could be interpreted as repression or activation by iron-free Fur were observed. Both the physiological and transcriptional data implicate a global regulatory role for Fur in the sulfate-reducing bacterium D. vulgaris.

Published ahead of print on 13 July 2007.

Present address: Department of Microbiology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901.

http://vimss.lbl.gov.

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