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Regulation of Iron Uptake by Fine-Tuning the Iron Responsiveness of the Iron Sensor Fur.

ABSTRACT: Iron is one of most abundant environmental metal ions but is highly limited in organisms. It is an important metal ion as it facilitates various biological processes, including catalysis of metabolic enzymes and DNA biogenesis. In bacteria, the ferric uptake regulator (Fur) protein controls iron uptake by regulating genes coding for iron transporters in response to iron concentration. This iron response is ascribed to Fur's intrinsic affinity for iron because its binding to iron dictates its regulatory function. However, we now report that the pathogen Salmonella achieves a proper response of Fur to changes in environmental iron concentrations via EIIANtr (a nitrogen metabolic phosphotransferase system component). We establish that EIIANtr increases expression of iron transporter-coding genes under low-iron conditions (i.e., nanomolar ranges) in a Fur-dependent manner, which promotes Salmonella growth under such conditions. EIIANtr directly hampers Fur binding to DNA, thereby inducing expression of those genes. This regulation allows Salmonella to express Fur-regulated genes under low-iron conditions. Our findings reveal a potentially widespread control mechanism of bacterial iron uptake systems operating in response to iron availability.IMPORTANCE Iron is a fundamental metal ion for living organisms as it facilitates various biological processes. The ferric uptake regulator (Fur) protein controls iron homeostasis in various bacterial species. It is believed that Fur's iron-dependent regulatory action is sufficient for it to function as an iron sensor. However, we now establish that the bacterial pathogen Salmonella enables Fur to properly reflect changes in surrounding iron availability by fine-tuning its responsiveness to iron. This process requires a protein that hampers Fur DNA binding at low iron concentrations. In this way, Salmonella broadens the range of iron concentrations that Fur responds to. Our findings reveal a potentially widespread control mechanism of bacterial iron homeostasis.

SUBMITTER: Choi J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6495754 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Regulation of Iron Uptake by Fine-Tuning the Iron Responsiveness of the Iron Sensor Fur.

Choi Jeongjoon J Ryu Sangryeol S

Applied and environmental microbiology 20190418 9

Iron is one of most abundant environmental metal ions but is highly limited in organisms. It is an important metal ion as it facilitates various biological processes, including catalysis of metabolic enzymes and DNA biogenesis. In bacteria, the ferric uptake regulator (Fur) protein controls iron uptake by regulating genes coding for iron transporters in response to iron concentration. This iron response is ascribed to Fur's intrinsic affinity for iron because its binding to iron dictates its reg ...[more]

PMID: 30824449

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Project description:The expression of iron-regulated systems in gram-negative bacteria is generally controlled by the Fur protein, which represses the transcription of iron-regulated promoters by using Fe2+ as a cofactor. Mutational analysis of the Campylobacter jejuni fur gene was carried out by generation of a set of mutant copies of fur which had a kanamycin or chloramphenicol resistance gene introduced into the regions encoding the N and C termini of the Fur protein. The mutated genes were recombined into the C. jejuni NCTC 11168 chromosome, and putative mutants were confirmed by Southern hybridization. C. jejuni mutants were obtained only when the resistance genes were transcribed in the same orientation as the fur gene. The C. jejuni fur mutant grew slower than the parental strain. Comparison of protein profiles of fractionated C. jejuni cells grown in low- or high-iron medium indicated derepressed expression of three iron-regulated outer membrane proteins with molecular masses of 70, 75, and 80 kDa. Characterization by N-terminal amino acid sequencing showed the 75-kDa protein to be identical to CfrA, a Campylobacter coli siderophore receptor homologue, whereas the 70-kDa protein was identified as a new siderophore receptor homologue. Periplasmic fractions contained four derepressed proteins with molecular masses of 19, 29, 32, and 36 kDa. The 19-kDa protein has been previously identified, but its function is unknown. The cytoplasmic fraction contained two iron-repressed and two iron-induced proteins with molecular masses of 26, 55, 31, and 40 kDa, respectively. The two iron-repressed proteins have been previously identified as the oxidative stress defense proteins catalase (KatA) and alkyl hydroperoxide reductase (AhpC). AhpC and KatA were still iron regulated in the fur mutant, suggesting the presence of Fur-independent iron regulation. Further analysis of the C. jejuni iron and Fur regulons by using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis demonstrated the total number of iron- and Fur-regulated proteins to be lower than for other bacterial pathogens.

Project description:UnlabelledClostridium difficile is an anaerobic, Gram-positive, spore-forming opportunistic pathogen and is the most common cause of hospital-acquired infectious diarrhea. Although iron acquisition in the host is a key to survival of bacterial pathogens, high levels of intracellular iron can increase oxidative damage. Therefore, expression of iron acquisition mechanisms is tightly controlled by transcriptional regulators. We identified a C. difficile homologue of the master bacterial iron regulator Fur. Using targetron mutagenesis, we generated a fur insertion mutant of C. difficile. To identify the genes regulated by Fur in C. difficile, we used microarray analysis to compare transcriptional differences between the fur mutant and the wild type when grown in high-iron medium. The fur mutant had increased expression of greater than 70 transcriptional units. Using quantitative reverse transcriptase PCR (qRT-PCR), we analyzed several of the Fur-regulated genes identified by the microarray and verified that they are both iron and Fur regulated in C. difficile. Among those Fur- and iron-repressed genes were C. difficile genes encoding 7 putative cation transport systems of different classes. We found that Fur was able to bind the DNA upstream of three Fur-repressed genes in electrophoretic mobility shift assays. We also demonstrate that expression of Fur-regulated putative iron acquisition systems was increased during C. difficile infection using the hamster model. Our data suggest that C. difficile expresses multiple iron transport mechanisms in response iron depletion in vitro and in vivo.ImportanceClostridium difficile is the most common cause of hospital-acquired infectious diarrhea and has been recently classified as an "urgent" antibiotic resistance threat by the CDC. To survive and cause disease, most bacterial pathogens must acquire the essential enzymatic cofactor iron. While import of adequate iron is essential for most bacterial growth, excess intracellular iron can lead to extensive oxidative damage. Thus, bacteria must regulate iron import to maintain iron homeostasis. We demonstrate here that C. difficile regulates expression of several putative iron acquisition systems using the transcriptional regulator Fur. These import mechanisms are induced under iron-limiting conditions in vitro and during C. difficile infection of the host. This suggests that during a C. difficile infection, iron availability is limited in vivo.

Project description:Dendritic cells (DCs) are the sentinels of the mammalian immune system and they undergo a complex maturation process mediated by activation upon pathogen detection. Recent studies described the analysis of activated DCs by transcriptional profiling, but translation regulation was never taken in account. Therefore, the nature of the mRNAs being translated at various stages of DC activation was determined with the help of translational profiling, which is the sucrose gradient fractionation of polysomal-bound mRNAs combined to microarrays analysis. Total and polysomal-bound mRNA populations were compared in immature (0h) and LPS-stimulated (4h and 16h) human monocyte-derived DCs with the help of Affymetrix microarrays. Biostatistical analysis indicated that 296 mRNA molecules are translationally regulated during DC-activation. The most abundant biological process among the regulated mRNAs was protein biosynthesis, indicating the existence of a negative feedback loop regulating translation. Interestingly, a cluster of 17 ribosomal proteins were part of the regulated mRNAs, indicating that translation may be fine-tuned by particular components of the translational machinery. Our observations highlight the importance of translation regulation during the immune response, and may favour the identification of novel gene clusters or protein networks relevant for immunity. Our study also provides information on the possible absence of correlation between gene expression and real protein production in DCs. To identify translationally regulated mRNA molecules, gene expression derived from the polysome-bound mRNAs was compared by Affymetrix microarrays analysis to the gene expression derived from unfractionated total mRNAs derived from whole-cell lysates, as recently described on several reports (Johannes 1999, Rajasekhar 2003, Bushell 2006, Lü 2006, Parent 2008). Polysomal RNA (P) and total RNA (T) were isolated from MoDCs generated from four different blood donors. Since three timepoints (0h, 4h and 16h) were chosen for each blood donor and RNA type, twenty-four RNA samples were totally analyzed by microarrays.

Dataset Information

Regulation of Iron Uptake by Fine-Tuning the Iron Responsiveness of the Iron Sensor Fur.

Publications

Regulation of Iron Uptake by Fine-Tuning the Iron Responsiveness of the Iron Sensor Fur.

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