AEM Accepts, published online ahead of print on 13 June 2008

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Appl. Environ. Microbiol. doi:10.1128/AEM.00556-08
Copyright (c) 2008, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND GROWTH PHASE REGULATION OF THE ARGININE DEIMINASE GENES OF STREPTOCOCCUS GORDONII

Yaling Liu, Yiqian Dong, Yi-Ywan M. Chen, and Robert A. Burne^*

Department of Oral Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32610

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: rburne{at}dental.ufl.edu.

A 1,026-bp ORF sharing significant similarity to queA, which encodes a predicted S-adenosylmethionine:tRNA ribosyltransferase-isomerase responsible for queosine modification of tRNAs, was found immediately 5' to the gene for the transcriptional activator (ArcR) of the arginine deiminase system (ADS) operon of Streptococcus gordonii. The role of QueA in bacterial physiology is enigmatic, but loss of QueA has been shown to compromise stationary phase survival or virulence in certain enteric bacteria. Interestingly, S. gordonii appears to be unique among ADS-positive bacteria in the linkage of queA with the ADS genes. A putative ⁷⁰ promoter (p_queA; TTGCCA -N₂₁-TATAAT) was mapped 5' to queA by primer extension and queA and arcR were shown to be co-transcribed. The expression from p_queA was found to be constitutive under all conditions tested, but the expression of p_arcA, which drives the expression of the arc structural genes, was enhanced in stationary phase and could be induced by low pH and arginine. QueA and CcpA acted repressively on arc transcription, but neither QueA- nor CcpA-deficient strains showed significant differences in AD enzyme activities compared with the wild-type strain. The growth rate of a QueA-deficient strain did not differ significantly from the parental strain, but it did not compete well with the wild-type during serial passage. In addition to the findings that ADS expression can be regulated separately by growth phase and pH, a significant linkage between the ADS, translational efficiency modulated by QueA and post-exponential phase survival of this organism has been disclosed.

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