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Volume 142, Issue 7

Acid tolerance in Rhizobium meliloti strain WSM419 involves a two-component sensor-regulator system Free

Abstract

An acid-sensitive mutant TG5-46, derived from WSM419 by Tn5 mutagenesis, fails to grow below pH 6.0 whereas the parent strain grows at pH 5.7. The DNA sequence of a 2.2 kb rhizobial DNA region flanking Tn5 in TG5-46 contains two open reading frames, ORF1 (designated ) and ORF2 (designated ), having high similarity to the sensor-regulator pairs of the two-component systems involved in signal transduction in prokaryotes. Insertion of an omega interposon into in WSM419 resulted in an acid-sensitive phenotype. A DNA fragment from the wild-type complemented the acid-sensitive phenotype of RT295 (ActS) and TG5-46 (ActR), while fragments containing only or complemented TG5-46 and RT295, respectively. The presence of multiple copies of complementes not only TG5-46 but also RT295. Cloning DNA upstream from and into a broad-host-range expression vector and measuring β-galactosidase activities showed that both genes are constitutively expressed regardless of the external pH. Genomic DNA from all strains of , but no other bacteria tested, hybridized with an probe at high stringency. These data implicate a two-component sensor-regulator protein pair in acid tolerance in and suggest their involvement in pH sensing and/or response by these bacteria.

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  • Accepted:
  • Revised:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): acid-tolerance genes , pH sensing , Rhizobium meliloti and two-component sensor-regulator system
© Society for General Microbiology 1996
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1996-07-01
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Acid tolerance in Rhizobium meliloti strain WSM419 involves a two-component sensor-regulator system
Microbiology 142, 1693 (1996); https://doi.org/10.1099/13500872-142-7-1693
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/13500872-142-7-1693
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/13500872-142-7-1693
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