• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.903-908
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• 2001

The gene aeg-46.5, which is expressed under anaerobic condition, has putative triple -10 regions and four transcription start sites. The mRNA transcription level and its start point change depending on the aerobic/anaerobic growth condition. RNA polymerase and its regulatory proteins must choose which of three -10 region to use. The putative triple 10 region was mutated to make only one of them function with consensus -10 region sequence (TATAAT) and the other two as non-functional region. The results show that the second and third -10 regions are used for the aerobic/anaerobic expression. The third -10 region is responsible for the high aerobic to anaerobic switch ratio. This suggests that only the last two of the putative triple -10 region have functions on aeg-46.5 gene expression switch control. The phenotype of the mutated promoter was tested in the wild type cell and narL - cell. The results indicate that the control by NarL is independent from the selection of -10 region. The expression patterns on multi-copy plasmids and on single-copy chromosome were compared. These results show that the aerobic/anaerobic switch control of aeg-46.5 is through the choice of -10 region. The mechanism of choosing different -10 region remains to be seen.

• BMB Reports
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.88-91
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• 1996

The anaerobically expressed gene aeg-46.5, which had been identified by the operon fusion technique with a hybrid bacteriophage of ${\lambda}$ and Mu, ${\lambda}$placMu53, was studied for its expression pattern and growth. The expression of aeg-46.5 was studied in the wild-type cell and mutant cells that have mutation (s) in the control gene of anaerobic respiration (fnr) and nitrate response (narL and narP). The ${\beta}$-galactosidase reporter gene showed maximum expression in narL host after two hours of aerobic to anaerobic switch in M9-Glc-nitrate medium. Both 40 mM and 100 mM concentrations of nitrate ion in the medium had little effect on expression level. We propose that aeg-46.5 is subject to multiple regulations of anaerobic activation by Fnr, nitrate activation by NarP and repression mediated by NarL.

• BMB Reports
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.92-97
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• 1996

The age-46.5 gene of Escherichia coli is induced by nitrate ion and regulated by Fnr, NarL, and NarP during anaerobic growth. aeg-46.5::lacZ fusion gene shows its maximum expression in narL host after two hours of aerobic to anaerobic switch in M9-Glc-nitrate medium. Fnr and NarP act as positive regulators, and NarL acts as a negative regulator. The control region of the aeg-46.5 was identified and the binding sites of regulator proteins have been predicted (Reznikoff and Choe (1993)). It has two symmetry regions. One is located at -52~-37 bp from the anaerobic mRNA 5'-end, which is the binding site of NarL and NarP. The other is located at +37~+56 bp from the 5'-end of mRNA. In this study, the downstream symmetry region from the mRNA 5'-end was investigated by site-directed mutagenesis. The destruction of the symmetry region increases the expression level of aeg-46.5. We propose that the symmetry region interferes with the expression of aeg-46.5 possibly by forming a stem-and-loop structure.