Skip to main content
NCBI home page
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1984 Jan;81(1):76–79. doi: 10.1073/pnas.81.1.76

Attenuation of the ilvB operon by amino acids reflecting substrates or products of the ilvB gene product.

C A Hauser, G W Hatfield
PMCID: PMC344613  PMID: 6198646

Abstract

Transcription termination at the ilvB attenuator of Escherichia coli K-12 has been quantitated by measuring the in vivo rate of synthesis and degradation of mRNA segments proximal and distal to the attenuator. This analysis demonstrates that a 4-fold deattenuation results in vivo when the growth of cells is limited by the availability of valine or leucine. The result suggests that attenuation is the major mechanism by which this operon is regulated by these end-product amino acids. On the basis of possible secondary structures of ilvB leader RNA, we predicted that attenuation of this operon should also be affected by growth of cells in limiting amounts of alanine or threonine. We report here that the ilvB operon is deattenuated when cells are starved for either of these amino acids. A rationale for the regulation of this operon by these four amino acids, which represent both the substrates and the products of the ilvB gene product, and by catabolite repression is presented.

Full text

PDF
76

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Adams C. W., Lawther R. P., Hatfield G. W. The ilvEDA operon of Escherichia coli K12 encodes only one valine-alpha-ketoglutarate transaminase activity. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1979 Jul 27;89(2):650–658. doi: 10.1016/0006-291x(79)90679-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Clarke L., Carbon J. A colony bank containing synthetic Col El hybrid plasmids representative of the entire E. coli genome. Cell. 1976 Sep;9(1):91–99. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(76)90055-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Elkins B. N., Keller E. B. The enzymatic synthesis of N-(purin-6-ylcarbamoyl)threonine, an anticodon-adjacent base in transfer ribonucleic acid. Biochemistry. 1974 Oct 22;13(22):4622–4628. doi: 10.1021/bi00719a024. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Friden P., Newman T., Freundlich M. Nucleotide sequence of the ilvB promoter-regulatory region: a biosynthetic operon controlled by attenuation and cyclic AMP. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1982 Oct;79(20):6156–6160. doi: 10.1073/pnas.79.20.6156. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Gegenheimer P., Apirion D. Processing of rRNA by RNAase P: spacer tRNAs are linked to 16S rRNA in an RNAase P RNAase III mutant strain of E. coli. Cell. 1978 Oct;15(2):527–539. doi: 10.1016/0092-8674(78)90021-1. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Guardiola J., De Felice M., Lamberti A., Iaccarino M. The acetolactate synthase isoenzymes of Escherichia coli K-12. Mol Gen Genet. 1977 Nov 4;156(1):17–25. doi: 10.1007/BF00272247. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Hallick R. B., Chelm B. K., Gray P. W., Orozco E. M., Jr Use of aurintricarboxylic acid as an inhibitor of nucleases during nucleic acid isolation. Nucleic Acids Res. 1977 Sep;4(9):3055–3064. doi: 10.1093/nar/4.9.3055. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Hauser C. A., Hatfield G. W. Nucleotide sequence of the ilvB multivalent attenuator region of Escherichia coli K12. Nucleic Acids Res. 1983 Jan 11;11(1):127–139. doi: 10.1093/nar/11.1.127. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. McKenney K., Shimatake H., Court D., Schmeissner U., Brady C., Rosenberg M. A system to study promoter and terminator signals recognized by Escherichia coli RNA polymerase. Gene Amplif Anal. 1981;2:383–415. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Messing J., Vieira J. A new pair of M13 vectors for selecting either DNA strand of double-digest restriction fragments. Gene. 1982 Oct;19(3):269–276. doi: 10.1016/0378-1119(82)90016-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Newman T., Friden P., Sutton A., Freundlich M. Cloning and expression of the ilvB gene of Escherichia coli K-12. Mol Gen Genet. 1982;186(3):378–384. doi: 10.1007/BF00729457. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Pastan I., Adhya S. Cyclic adenosine 5'-monophosphate in Escherichia coli. Bacteriol Rev. 1976 Sep;40(3):527–551. doi: 10.1128/br.40.3.527-551.1976. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Sutton A., Freundlich M. Regulation of cyclic AMP of the ilvB-encoded biosynthetic acetohydroxy acid synthase in Escherichia coli K-12. Mol Gen Genet. 1980 Apr;178(1):179–183. doi: 10.1007/BF00267227. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Theall G., Low K. B., Söll D. Suppression of a defective alanyl-tRNA synthetase in Escherichia coli: a compensatory mutation to high alanine affinity. Mol Gen Genet. 1977 Nov 14;156(2):221–227. doi: 10.1007/BF00283495. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Yanofsky C. Attenuation in the control of expression of bacterial operons. Nature. 1981 Feb 26;289(5800):751–758. doi: 10.1038/289751a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America are provided here courtesy of National Academy of Sciences

RESOURCES