BioProject

Iron-sulphur (Fe-S) clusters are ensembles of iron and sulphide centres. They are found in all life forms and are important components of many enzymes involved in diverse cellular processes, including respiration, DNA synthesis or gene regulation. More...

Iron-sulphur (Fe-S) clusters are ensembles of iron and sulphide centres. They are found in all life forms and are important components of many enzymes involved in diverse cellular processes, including respiration, DNA synthesis or gene regulation. However, the increase in oxygen after the emergence of oxygenic photosynthesis created a threat to Fe–S proteins and, consequently, to the organisms relying on them. Therefore, bacteria have evolved mechanisms to maintain a precise intracellular iron concentration. A major role of IscR in R. sphaeroides iron dependent regulation was suggested in a bioinformatic study , which predicted a binding site in the upstream regions of several iron uptake genes. Most known IscR proteins have Fe-S clusters featuring (Cys)3(His)1 ligation. However, IscR proteins from Rhodobacteraceae harbour only one Cys residue and it was considered unlikely that they can ligate an Fe-S cluster. In this study, the role of R. sphaeroides IscR as transcriptional regulator and sensor of the Fe-S cluster status of the cell was analysed. The results provide evidence that R. sphaeroides IscR functions as transcriptional repressor of genes involved in iron metabolism by binding to the predicted DNA binding motif. Furthermore, IscR possesses a unique Fe-S cluster ligation scheme with only a single cysteine involved. Overall design: RNA samples collected from a control strain (wild type 2.4.1) and of the iscR deletion strain (2.4.1∆iscR) were analyzed by two-color microarrays Less...