Project description:In α-proteobacteria, strict regulation of cell cycle progression is necessary for the specific cellular differentiation required for adaptation to diverse environmental niches. The symbiotic lifestyle of Sinorhizobium meliloti requires a drastic cellular differentiation that includes genome amplification. To achieve polyploidy, the S. meliloti cell cycle program must be altered to uncouple DNA replication from cell division. In the α-proteobacterium Caulobacter crescentus, cell cycle regulated transcription plays an important role in control of cell cycle progression but this has not been demonstrated in other α-proteobacteria. Here we describe a robust method for synchronizing cell growth that enabled the first global analysis of S. meliloti cell cycle regulated gene expression. The objective of the microarray-based cell cycle gene expression analysis was to determine which genes were transcriptionally regulated as a funciton of a cell cycle in order to understand the contribution of transcriptional regulation to the timing of cell cycle events. The microarray analysis identified 462 genes with cell cycle regulated transcripts, including several key cell cycle regulators, and genes involved in motility, attachment, and cell division. Only 28% of the 462 S. meliloti cell cycle regulated genes were also transcriptionally cell cycle regulated in C. crescentus. Furthermore, CtrA and DnaA binding motif analysis revealed little overlap between the cell cycle-dependent regulons of CtrA and DnaA in S. meliloti and C. crescentus. The predicted S. meliloti cell cycle regulon of CtrA, but not that of DnaA, was strongly conserved in more closely related α-proteobacteria with similar ecological niches as S. meliloti, suggesting that the CtrA cell cycle regulatory network may control functions of central importance to the specific lifestyles of α-proteobacteria. Gene expression levels were quantified in synchronously growing S. meliloti cultures across 8 time points and compared to gene expression levels in unsynchronized culture via a two-color custom agilent array

Project description:In α-proteobacteria, strict regulation of cell cycle progression is necessary for the specific cellular differentiation required for adaptation to diverse environmental niches. The symbiotic lifestyle of Sinorhizobium meliloti requires a drastic cellular differentiation that includes genome amplification. To achieve polyploidy, the S. meliloti cell cycle program must be altered to uncouple DNA replication from cell division. In the α-proteobacterium Caulobacter crescentus, cell cycle regulated transcription plays an important role in control of cell cycle progression but this has not been demonstrated in other α-proteobacteria. Here we describe a robust method for synchronizing cell growth that enabled the first global analysis of S. meliloti cell cycle regulated gene expression. The objective of the microarray-based cell cycle gene expression analysis was to determine which genes were transcriptionally regulated as a funciton of a cell cycle in order to understand the contribution of transcriptional regulation to the timing of cell cycle events. The microarray analysis identified 462 genes with cell cycle regulated transcripts, including several key cell cycle regulators, and genes involved in motility, attachment, and cell division. Only 28% of the 462 S. meliloti cell cycle regulated genes were also transcriptionally cell cycle regulated in C. crescentus. Furthermore, CtrA and DnaA binding motif analysis revealed little overlap between the cell cycle-dependent regulons of CtrA and DnaA in S. meliloti and C. crescentus. The predicted S. meliloti cell cycle regulon of CtrA, but not that of DnaA, was strongly conserved in more closely related α-proteobacteria with similar ecological niches as S. meliloti, suggesting that the CtrA cell cycle regulatory network may control functions of central importance to the specific lifestyles of α-proteobacteria. Gene expression levels were quantified in synchronously growing S. meliloti cultures across 8 time points and compared to gene expression levels in unsynchronized culture via a two-color custom agilent array A two-color array format was used with time point from synchronous culture being competed with a sample from unsynchronized culture (control same for all arrays) to determine the cell cycle-phase specific induction or repression of genes relative to batch culture which contains cells in all phases of the cell cycle. For each of the 8 cell cycle time points, four biological replicates were used resulting in 4 arrays per time point and a total of 32 arrays. The arrays also contained duplicates of each probe resulting in two technical replicates per biological replicate per time point.

Project description:Investigation of whole genome expression changes in Magnetospririllum magneticum mutants, probing the role of the CtrA regulatory pathway. The mutants are further described in a manuscript submitted for publication at J. Bacteriology. Developmental events across the prokaryotic life cycle are highly regulated at the transcriptional and post-translational levels. Key elements of a few regulatory networks are conserved among phylogenetic groups of bacteria, although the features controlled by these conserved systems are as diverse as the organisms encoding them. In this work, we probe the role of the CtrA regulatory network, conserved throughout the Alphaproteobacteria, in the magnetotactic bacterium, Magnetospirillum magneticum strain AMB-1, which possesses unique intracellular organization and compartmentalization. While we show that CtrA in AMB-1 is not essential for viability, it is required for motility, and its putative phosphorylation state dictates the ability of CtrA to activate the flagella biosynthesis gene cascade. Gene expression analysis of strains expressing active and inactive CtrA alleles point to the composition of the extended CtrA regulon, including both direct and indirect targets. These results, combined with a bioinformatic study of the AMB-1 genome, enabled the prediction of an AMB-1 specific CtrA binding site. Further, phylogenetic studies comparing CtrA sequences from Alphaproteobacteria in which the role of CtrA has been experimentally examined reveals an ancestral role of CtrA in the regulation of motility and suggests that its essential functions in other Alphaproteobacteria were acquired subsequently. Total RNA was recovered from each of the wild-type and mutant strains, reverse transcribed to cDNA, fluorescently labeled, and hybridized to whole genome microarrays. The arrays contain 7 probes/gene, with the entire genome duplicated twice. In addition, the arrays contain 7 probes for 22 unannotated ORFs and tiling of a genomic region from coordinates 977403-1097027.

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The transcirptional effect of CtrA depletion in S. meliloti

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