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Volume 157, Issue 2

ArgR is an essential local transcriptional regulator of the operon in and is crucial for biological fitness in an acidic environment Free

Abstract

is one of the most important pathogens in pigs and can also cause severe infections in humans. Despite its clinical relevance, very little is known about the factors that contribute to its virulence. Recently, we identified a new putative virulence factor in , the arginine deiminase system (ADS), an arginine catabolic enzyme system encoded by the operon, which enables to survive in an acidic environment. In this study, we focused on ArgR, an ADS-associated regulator belonging to the ArgR/AhrC arginine repressor family. Using an knockout strain we were able to show that ArgR is essential for operon expression and necessary for the biological fitness of . By cDNA expression microarray analyses and quantitative real-time RT-PCR we found that the operon is the only gene cluster regulated by ArgR, which is in contrast to the situation in many other bacteria. Reporter gene analysis with under the control of the promoter demonstrated that ArgR is able to activate the promoter. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays with fragments of the promoter and recombinant ArgR, and chromatin immunoprecipitation with antibodies directed against ArgR, revealed that ArgR interacts with the promoter and by binding to a region from −147 to −72 bp upstream of the transcriptional start point. Overall, our results show that in , ArgR is an essential, system-specific transcriptional regulator of the ADS that interacts directly with the promoter .

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Revised:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): 5′-RACE, rapid amplification of 5′ cDNA ends , ADS, arginine deiminase system , CCR, carbon catabolite repression , EMSA, electrophoretic mobility shift assay and qRT-PCR, quantitative RT-PCR
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2011-02-01
2024-04-19
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ArgR is an essential local transcriptional regulator of the arcABC operon in Streptococcus suis and is crucial for biological fitness in an acidic environment
Microbiology 157, 572 (2011); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.043067-0
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.043067-0
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.043067-0
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