Nitrile-inducible gene expression in mycobacteria.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Pandey AK
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2845969 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Nitrile-inducible gene expression in mycobacteria.
Pandey Amit K AK Raman Sahadevan S Proff Rose R Joshi Swati S Kang Choong-Min CM Rubin Eric J EJ Husson Robert N RN Sassetti Christopher M CM
Tuberculosis (Edinburgh, Scotland) 20080917 1
The ability to ectopically control gene expression is a fundamental tool for the study of bacterial physiology and pathogenesis. While many efficient inducible expression systems are available for Gram-negative bacteria, few are useful in phylogenetically distant organisms, such as mycobacteria. We have adapted a highly-inducible regulon of Rhodococcus rhodochrous to artificially regulate gene expression in both rapidly-growing environmental mycobacteria and slow-growing pathogens, such as Mycob ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:Conditional expression is a powerful tool to investigate the role of bacterial genes. Here, we adapt the Pseudomonas putida-derived positively regulated XylS/Pm expression system to control inducible gene expression in Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of human tuberculosis. By making simple changes to a Gram-negative broad-host-range XylS/Pm-regulated gene expression vector, we prove that it is possible to adapt this well-studied expression system to non-Gram-negative species. With the benzoic acid-derived inducer m-toluate, we achieve a robust, time- and dose-dependent reversible induction of Pm-mediated expression in mycobacteria, with low background expression levels. XylS/Pm is thus an important addition to existing mycobacterial expression tools, especially when low basal expression is of particular importance.
| S-EPMC4562662 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Research on the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) would benefit from novel tools for regulated gene expression. Here we describe the characterization and application of a synthetic riboswitch-based system, which comprises a mycobacterial promoter for transcriptional control and a riboswitch for translational control. The system was used to induce and repress heterologous protein overexpression reversibly, to create a conditional gene knockdown, and to control gene expression in a macrophage infection model. Unlike existing systems for controlling gene expression in Mtb, the riboswitch does not require the co-expression of any accessory proteins: all of the regulatory machinery is encoded by a short DNA segment directly upstream of the target gene. The inducible riboswitch platform has the potential to be a powerful general strategy for creating customized gene regulation systems in Mtb.
| S-EPMC3261144 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Conditional expression strains serve as a valuable tool to study the essentiality and to establish the vulnerability of a target under investigation in a drug discovery program. While essentiality implies an absolute requirement of a target function, vulnerability provides valuable information on the extent to which a target function needs to be depleted to achieve bacterial growth inhibition followed by cell death. The critical feature of an ideal conditional expression system is its ability to tightly regulate gene expression to achieve the full spectrum spanning from a high level of expression in order to support growth and near zero level of expression to mimic conditions of gene knockout. A number of bacterial conditional expression systems have been reported for use in mycobacteria. The utility of an isopropylthiogalactoside (IPTG) inducible system in mycobacteria has been reported for protein overexpression and anti-sense gene expression from a replicating multi-copy plasmid. Herein, we report the development of a versatile set of non-replicating IPTG inducible vectors for mycobacteria which can be used for generation of conditional expression strains through homologous recombination. The role of a single lac operator versus a double lac operator to regulate gene expression was evaluated by monitoring the expression levels of ?-galactosidase in Mycobacterium smegmatis. These studies indicated a significant level of leaky expression from the vector with a single lac operator but none from the vector with double lac operator. The significance of the double lac operator vector for target validation was established by monitoring the growth kinetics of an inhA, a rpoB and a ftsZ conditional expression strain grown in the presence of different concentrations of IPTG. The utility of this inducible system in identifying target specific inhibitors was established by screening a focussed library of small molecules using an inhA and a rpoB conditional expression strain.
| S-EPMC4527713 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We report here the behavior of naturally occurring and rationally engineered preQ1 riboswitches and their application to inducible gene regulation in mycobacteria. Because mycobacteria lack preQ1 biosynthetic genes, we hypothesized that preQ1 could be used as an exogenous nonmetabolite ligand to control riboswitches in mycobacteria. Selected naturally occurring preQ1 riboswitches were assayed and successfully drove preQ1-dependent repression of a green fluorescent protein reporter in Mycobacterium smegmatis Using structure-based design, we engineered three preQ1 riboswitches from Thermoanaerobacter tencongensis, Bacillus subtilis, and Lactobacillus rhamnosus toward achieving higher response ratios and increased repression. Assuming a steady-state model, variants of the T. tencongensis riboswitch most closely followed the predicted trends. Unexpectedly, the preQ1 dose response was best described by a model with a second, independent preQ1 binding site. This behavior was general to the preQ1 riboswitch family, since the wild type and rationally designed mutants of riboswitches from all three bacteria behaved analogously. Across all variants, the response ratios, which describe expression in the absence versus the presence of preQ1, ranged from <2 to ∼10, but repression in all cases was incomplete up to 1 mM preQ1. By reducing the transcript expression level, we obtained a preQ1 riboswitch variant appropriate for inducible knockdown applications. We further showed that the preQ1 response is reversible, is titratable, and can be used to control protein expression in mycobacteria within infected macrophages. By engineering naturally occurring preQ1 riboswitches, we have not only extended the tools available for inducible gene regulation in mycobacteria but also uncovered new behavior of these riboswitches.IMPORTANCE Riboswitches are elements found in noncoding regions of mRNA that regulate gene expression, typically in response to an endogenous metabolite. Riboswitches have emerged as important tools for inducible gene expression in diverse organisms. We noted that mycobacteria lack the biosynthesis genes for preQ1, a ligand for riboswitches from diverse bacteria. Predicting that preQ1 is not present in mycobacteria, we showed that it controls optimized riboswitches appropriate for gene knockdown applications. Further, the riboswitch response is subject to a second independent preQ1 binding event that has not been previously documented. By engineering naturally occurring riboswitches, we have uncovered a new behavior, with implications for riboswitch function in its native context, and extended the tools available for inducible gene regulation in mycobacteria.
| S-EPMC5331669 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In order to identify novel high value antibacterial targets it is desirable to delineate whether the inactivation of the target enzyme will lead to bacterial death or stasis. This knowledge is particularly important in slow growing organisms, like mycobacteria, where most of the viable anti-tubercular agents are bactericidal. A bactericidal target can be identified through the conditional deletion or inactivation of the target gene at a relatively high cell number and subsequently following the time course of survival for the bacteria. A simple protocol to execute conditional inactivation of a gene is by antisense expression. We have developed a mycobacteria specific IPTG inducible vector system and monitored the effect of antisense inhibition of several known essential genes in mycobacteria by following their survival kinetics. By this method, we could differentiate between genes whose down regulation lead to bacteriostatic or bactericidal effect. Targets for standard anti-tubercular drugs like inhA for isoniazid, rpoB and C for rifampicin, and gyr A/B for flouroquinolones were shown to be bactericidal. In contrast targets like FtsZ behaved in a bacteriostatic manner. Induction of antisense expression in embB and ribosomal RNA genes, viz., rplJ and rpsL showed only a marginal growth inhibition. The specificity of the antisense inhibition was conclusively shown in the case of auxotrophic gene ilvB. The bactericidal activity following antisense expression of ilvB was completely reversed when the growth media was supplemented with the isoleucine, leucine, valine and pantothenate. Additionally, under these conditions the expression of several genes in branched chain amino acid pathway was severely suppressed indicating targeted gene inactivation.
| S-EPMC2691988 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundUpon initial infection with mycobacteria, macrophages secrete multiple cytokines and chemokines, including interleukin-6 (IL-6), IL-8 and tumor necrosis factor-? (TNF-?), to mediate host immune responses against the pathogen. Mycobacteria also induce the production of IL-10 via PKR activation in primary human monocytes and macrophages. As an anti-inflammatory cytokine, over-expression of IL-10 may contribute to mycobacterial evasion of the host immunity. Radix Paeoniae Rubra (RPR, Chishao), a Chinese medicinal herb with potentials of anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective and neuroprotective effects, is used to treat tuberculosis. This study investigates the immunoregulatory effects of RPR on primary human blood macrophages (PBMac) during mycobacterial infection.MethodsThe interaction of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) with PBMac was used as an experimental model. A series of procedures involving solvent extraction and fractionation were used to isolate bioactive constituents in RPR. RPR-EA-S1, a fraction with potent immunoregulatory effects was obtained with a bioactivity guided fractionation scheme. PBMac were treated with crude RPR extracts or RPR-EA-S1 before BCG stimulation. The expression levels of IL-6, IL-8, IL-10 and TNF-? were measured by qPCR and ELISA. Western blotting was used to determine the effects of RPR-EA-S1 on signaling kinases and transcriptional factors in the BCG-activated PBMac.ResultsIn BCG-stimulated macrophages, crude RPR extracts and fraction RPR-EA-S1 specifically inhibited IL-10 production while enhanced IL-8 expression at both mRNA and protein levels without affecting the expressions of IL-6 and TNF-?. Inhibition of BCG-induced IL-10 expression by RPR-EA-S1 occurred in a dose- and time-dependent manner. RPR-EA-S1 did not affect the phosphorylation of cellular protein kinases including MAPK, Akt and GSK3?. Instead, it suppressed the degradation of I?B? in the cytoplasm and inhibited the translocation of transcription factor NF-?B1 p50 to the nucleus.ConclusionRPR crude extracts and its fraction RPR-EA-S1 inhibited anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 and enhanced pro-inflammatory chemokine IL-8 expression in BCG-activated PBMac. The inhibitory effects of RPR-EA-S1 on IL-10 expression in BCG-activated PBMac may be due to the reduced nuclear translocation of NF-?B1 p50.
| S-EPMC3076300 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Although the major events in prokaryotic cell cycle progression are likely to be coordinated with transcriptional and metabolic changes, these processes remain poorly characterized. Unlike many rapidly growing bacteria, DNA replication and cell division are temporally resolved in mycobacteria, making these slow-growing organisms a potentially useful system to investigate the prokaryotic cell cycle. To determine whether cell-cycle-dependent gene regulation occurs in mycobacteria, we characterized the temporal changes in the transcriptome of synchronously replicating populations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). By enriching for genes that display a sinusoidal expression pattern, we discover 485 genes that oscillate with a period consistent with the cell cycle. During cytokinesis, the timing of gene induction could be used to predict the timing of gene function, as mRNA abundance was found to correlate with the order in which proteins were recruited to the developing septum. Similarly, the expression pattern of primary metabolic genes could be used to predict the relative importance of these pathways for different cell cycle processes. Pyrimidine synthetic genes peaked during DNA replication, and their depletion caused a filamentation phenotype that phenocopied defects in this process. In contrast, the inosine monophasphate dehydrogenase dedicated to guanosine synthesis, GuaB2, displayed the opposite expression pattern and its depletion perturbed septation. Together, these data imply obligate coordination between primary metabolism and cell division and identify periodically regulated genes that can be related to specific cell biological functions.
| S-EPMC7578119 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Molecular understanding of placental functions and pregnancy disorders is limited by the absence of methods for placenta-specific gene manipulation. Although persistent placenta-specific gene expression has been achieved by lentivirus-based gene delivery methods, developmentally and physiologically important placental genes have highly stage-specific functions, requiring controllable, transient expression systems for functional analysis. Here, we describe an inducible, placenta-specific gene expression system that enables high-level, transient transgene expression and monitoring of gene expression by live bioluminescence imaging in mouse placenta at different stages of pregnancy. We used the third generation tetracycline-responsive tranactivator protein Tet-On 3G, with 10- to 100-fold increased sensitivity to doxycycline (Dox) compared with previous versions, enabling unusually sensitive on-off control of gene expression in vivo. Transgenic mice expressing Tet-On 3G were created using a new integrase-based, site-specific approach, yielding high-level transgene expression driven by a ubiquitous promoter. Blastocysts from these mice were transduced with the Tet-On 3G-response element promoter-driving firefly luciferase using lentivirus-mediated placenta-specific gene delivery and transferred into wild-type pseudopregnant recipients for placenta-specific, Dox-inducible gene expression. Systemic Dox administration at various time points during pregnancy led to transient, placenta-specific firefly luciferase expression as early as d 5 of pregnancy in a Dox dose-dependent manner. This system enables, for the first time, reliable pregnancy stage-specific induction of gene expression in the placenta and live monitoring of gene expression during pregnancy. It will be widely applicable to studies of both placental development and pregnancy, and the site-specific Tet-On G3 mouse will be valuable for studies in a broad range of tissues.
| S-EPMC3473213 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The tetracycline-controlled Tet-Off and Tet-On gene expression systems are used to regulate the activity of genes in eukaryotic cells in diverse settings, varying from basic biological research to biotechnology and gene therapy applications. These systems are based on regulatory elements that control the activity of the tetracycline-resistance operon in bacteria. The Tet-Off system allows silencing of gene expression by administration of tetracycline (Tc) or tetracycline-derivatives like doxycycline (dox), whereas the Tet-On system allows activation of gene expression by dox. Since the initial design and construction of the original Tet-system, these bacterium-derived systems have been significantly improved for their function in eukaryotic cells. We here review how a dox-controlled HIV-1 variant was designed and used to greatly improve the activity and dox-sensitivity of the rtTA transcriptional activator component of the Tet-On system. These optimized rtTA variants require less dox for activation, which will reduce side effects and allow gene control in tissues where a relatively low dox level can be reached, such as the brain.
| S-EPMC5070417 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:3-Hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) is an important platform chemical that boasts a variety of industrial applications. Gene expression systems inducible by 3-HP, if available, are of great utility for optimization of the pathways of 3-HP production and excretion. RESULTS:Here we report the presence of unique inducible gene expression systems in Pseudomonas denitrificans and other microorganisms. In P. denitrificans, transcription of three genes (hpdH, mmsA and hbdH-4) involved in 3-HP degradation was upregulated by 3-HP by the action of a transcriptional regulator protein, LysR, and a cis-acting regulatory site for LysR binding. Similar inducible systems having an LysR transcriptional regulator were identified in other microorganisms that also could degrade 3-HP. A docking study showed that the 3-HP binding pocket is located between the N-terminal helix-turn-helix motif and the C-terminal cofactor-binding domain. CONCLUSIONS:This LysR-regulated 3-HP-inducible system should prove useful for control of the level of gene expression in response to 3-HP.
| S-EPMC4617489 | biostudies-literature