A bacteria-specific 2[4Fe-4S] ferredoxin is essential in Pseudomonas aeruginosa

BMC Microbiology

Research Article

Panagiotis Peteinatos¹  George Diallinas¹  Georgios Efthymiou²  Panayotis Kyritsis²  Sylvie Elsen³  Jean-Marc Moulis⁴ 

[1] Department of Botany, Faculty of Biology, University of Athens, 15781, Panepistimioupolis, Athens, Greece;Department of Inorganic Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Athens, 15771, Panepistimioupolis, Athens, Greece;Laboratoire de Biochimie et Biophysique des Systèmes Intégrés;, iRTSV, CEA, Grenoble, France;BBSI, CNRS, Grenoble, France;Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France;Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France;Laboratoire de Chimie et Biologie des Métaux, iRTSV, CEA, Grenoble, France;LCBM, CNRS, Grenoble, France;

关键词: Luria Broth;    Pylorus Strain;    Miller Unit;    Francisella Tularensis;    Amino Acid Insertion;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2180-10-271

 received in 2010-05-21, accepted in 2010-10-28,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundFerredoxins are small iron-sulfur proteins belonging to all domains of life. A sub-group binds two [4Fe-4S] clusters with unequal and extremely low values of the reduction potentials. These unusual properties are associated with two specific fragments of sequence. The functional importance of the very low potential ferredoxins is unknown.ResultsA bioinformatic screening of the sequence features defining very low potential 2[4Fe-4S] ferredoxins has revealed the almost exclusive presence of the corresponding fdx gene in the Proteobacteria phylum, without occurrence in Archaea and Eukaryota. The transcript was found to be monocistronic in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and not part of an operon in most bacteria. Only fdx genes of bacteria which anaerobically degrade aromatic compounds belong to operons. As this pathway is not present in all bacteria having very low potential 2[4Fe-4S] ferredoxins, these proteins cannot exclusively be reductants of benzoyl CoA reductases. Expression of the ferredoxin gene did not change in response to varying growth conditions, including upon macrophage infection or aerobic growth with 4-hydroxy benzoate as carbon source. However, it increased along the growth curve in Pseudomonas aeruginosa and in Escherichia coli. The sequence immediately 5' upstream of the coding sequence contributed to the promotor activity. Deleting the fdx gene in Pseudomonas aeruginosa abolished growth, unless a plasmid copy of the gene was provided to the deleted strain.ConclusionsThe gene of the very low potential 2[4Fe-4S] ferredoxin displays characteristics of a housekeeping gene, and it belongs to the minority of genes that are essential in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These data identify a new potential antimicrobial target in this and other pathogenic Proteobacteria.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Elsen et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.