Chronic infection by alginate-producing (mucoid) Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the leading cause of mortality among cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. During the course of sustained infection, the production of an alginate capsule protects the bacteria and allows them to persist in the CF lung. One of the key regulators of alginate synthesis is the algT (aIgU) gene encoding a putative alternative af factor (aE).AlgT was hyperproduced and purified from Escherichia coli. The N-terminal sequence of the purified protein matched perfectly with that predicted from the DNA sequence. The purified protein, in the presence of E. coli RNA polymerase core enzyme, was able to initiate transcription of an algT promoter. Deletion of the -35 region of this promoter abolished this activity in vitro as well as in vivo. These data indicate that the algT gene encodes a cr factor that is autoregulatory.

Conversion from the nonmucoid to the mucoid phenotype is a typical feature of Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains causing chronic pulmonary infections in cystic fibrosis patients. One of the key genetic controls in this conversion to mucoidy is from the algT(U)-mucA-mucB(algN) locus, located at 67.5 min on the standard P. aeruginosa chromosomal map. The algT gene promotes conversion to mucoidy and encodes an alternative sigma factor ( E ) which belongs to the ECF (for extracytoplasmic function) family. On the other hand, the mucA and mucB (algN) genes suppress conversion to mucoidy. Loss-of-function mutations in mucA have been postulated to be the cause of mucoidy in some P. aeruginosa strains isolated from cystic fibrosis patients. We expressed and purified the protein products from the mucA and mucB open reading frames. The purified MucA protein abolishes the in vitro transcription specified by AlgT and the ability of AlgT to compete with an Escherichia coli sigma factor, FliA, suggesting that inhibiting AlgT-dependent transcription could be the mechanism by which mucA suppresses mucoidy in vivo. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and glycerol density gradient sedimentation experiments suggest that MucA physically interacts with AlgT.

The soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida is capable of degrading many aromatic compounds, including benzoate, through catechol as an intermediate. The catabolism of catechol is mediated by the catBCA operon, whose induction requires the pathway intermediate cis,cis-muconate as an inducer and the regulatory protein, CatR. CatR also regulates the plasmid-borne pheBA operon of P. putida PaW85, which is involved in phenol catabolism. We have used an in vitro transcription system to study the roles of CatR, cis,cis-muconate, Escherichia coli RNA polymerase, and promoter sequences in expression of the cat and phe operons. The assay confirmed the requirement of both CatR and cis,cis-muconate for transcript formation. We also examined the in vitro transcription of three site-directed mutants of the catBCA promoter; the results obtained compared favorably with previous in vivo data. The requirement of the ␣ subunit of RNA polymerase for expression of the catBCA and the pheBA transcripts was also examined. The C-terminal region of the ␣ subunit of RNA polymerase has been implicated in direct protein-protein contact with transcriptional regulatory proteins and/or direct contact with the DNA. We show that the carboxyl terminus of the ␣ subunit is required for the expression of the catBCA and the pheBA operons because RNA polymerases with truncated ␣ subunits were deficient in activation. Further experiments demonstrated the arginine at position 265 and the asparagine at position 268 of the ␣ subunit as possible amino acids involved in activation. On the basis of these and previous results, we propose a model to explain the interaction of the different regulatory components leading to CatR-dependent activation of the catBCA operon.