Project description:Acclimation to low CO2 conditions in cyanobacteria involves the coordinated regulation of genes mainly encoding components of the carbon concentration mechanism (CCM). Making use of several independent microarray datasets a core set of CO2-regulated genes was defined for the model strain Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. On the transcriptional level, the CCM is mainly regulated by the well-characterized transcriptional regulators NdhR and CmpR, whereas the role of an additional regulatory protein, namely cyAbrB2 belonging to the widely distributed AbrB regulator family that was originally characterized in the genus Bacillus, is less defined. Here we present results of transcript profiling of the wild type and a ΔcyabrB2 mutant of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 after shifts from high CO2 (5% in air, HC) to low CO2 (0.04%, LC). Evaluation of the transcriptomic data revealed that cyAbrB2 is involved in the regulation of several CCM-related genes such as sbtA/B, ndhF3/ndhD3/cupA and cmpABCD under LC conditions, but apparently acts supplementary to the main regulators. Under HC conditions, cyAbrB2 deletion changes the expression of photosystem II subunits, light-harvesting components, and Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle enzymes.
Project description:Regulation of gene expression is a sophisticated process leading to the activation or suppression of genes due to adaptation to environmental stimuli. The membrane-embedded FtsH proteases conserved in bacteria, chloroplasts and mitochondria, are involved in such regulation. The genome of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 encodes four FtsH homologues FtsH1-4, functioning in the form of oligomeric complexes. Homologue FtsH3 is bound in two hetero-oligomeric complexes, FtsH1/FstH3 and/or FtsH2/FtsH3, respectively. Previous data showed that the FtsH1/FtsH3 complex is involved in the acclimation of cells to iron deficiency by controlling the availability of the transcriptional regulator Fur (Sll0567). To gain more comprehensive insight into the physiological role of FtsH hetero-complexes, we carried out genome-wide expression profiling of a mutant conditionally depleted in FtsH3, grown under nutrient sufficiency and iron depletion. Our results show, that besides Fur, also the SufR and Pho regulons belong to the set of genes controlled by FtsH. Moreover, by combining the transcriptome data with in silico prediction we identified novel targets of Fur in Synechocystis PCC 6803. Fur tends to evoke mostly repression, but also appears to activate some target genes. We monitored the global gene expression in a conditional Synechocystis PCC6083 ftsH knockdown strain (FtsHdown) (Boehm et al., 2012) and a control strain (WT) at standard conditions and at iron depletion. The presence of ammonia to induced the conditional knockdown. Each sample was done in biological replicates.