Affiliation:
1. Department of Biochemistry, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0664
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Nitrate has been shown to shunt the electron flow in
Clostridium thermoaceticum
from CO
2
to nitrate, but it did not influence the levels of enzymes involved in the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway (J. M. Fröstl, C. Seifritz, and H. L. Drake, J. Bacteriol. 178:4597–4603, 1996). Here we show that under some growth conditions, nitrate does in fact repress proteins involved in the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway. The CO oxidation activity in crude extracts of nitrate (30 mM)–supplemented cultures was fivefold less than that of nitrate-free cultures, while the H
2
oxidation activity was six- to sevenfold lower. The decrease in CO oxidation activity paralleled a decrease in CO dehydrogenase (CODH) protein level, as confirmed by Western blot analysis. Protein levels of CODH in nitrate-supplemented cultures were 50% lower than those in nitrate-free cultures. Western blots analyses showed that nitrate also decreased the levels of the corrinoid iron-sulfur protein (60%) and methyltransferase (70%). Surprisingly, the decrease in activity and protein levels upon nitrate supplementation was observed only when cultures were continuously sparged. Northern blot analysis indicates that the regulation of the proteins involved in the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway by nitrate is at the transcriptional level. At least a 10-fold decrease in levels of cytochrome b was observed with nitrate supplementation whether the cultures were sparged or stoppered. We also detected nitrate-inducible nitrate reductase activity (2 to 39 nmol min
−1
mg
−1
) in crude extracts of
C. thermoaceticum
. Our results indicate that nitrate coordinately represses genes encoding enzymes and electron transport proteins in the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway and activates transcription of nitrate respiratory proteins. CO
2
also appears to induce expression of the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway genes and repress nitrate reductase activity.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Molecular Biology,Microbiology
Cited by
34 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献