Glucans produced by the glucosyltransferase (GTF) of Streptococcus gordonii confer a hard, cohesive phenotype (Spp ؉) on colonies grown on sucrose agar plates. S. gordonii strains with specific mutations in the region of gtfG that encodes the GTF carboxyl terminus were characterized. In the parental strain Challis CH1, this region included a series of six direct repeats thought to function in glucan binding. The spontaneous mutant strain CH107 had a 585-bp deletion resulting in the loss of three internal direct repeats. Insertional mutagenesis was used to construct strain CH2RPE, which had the parental repeat region but was missing 14 carboxyl-terminal amino acids. The similarly constructed strain CH4RPE had an in-frame addition of 390 nucleotides encoding two additional direct repeats. Although strains CH1, CH2RPE, and CH4RPE all had similar levels of extracellular GTF activity, strain CH107 had less than 15% of the parental activity; however, Western blots (immunoblots) indicated that the amounts of extracellular GTF protein in all four strains were similar. 13 C NMR analyses indicated that partially purified GTFs from the Spp ؉ strains CH1, CH2RPE, and CH4RPE all produced glucans with similar ratios of ␣1,6 and ␣1,3 glucosidic linkages, whereas the Spp ؊ strain CH107 GTF produced primarily ␣1,6-linked glucans. Transformation of strain CH107 with pAMS57, which carries the gtfG positive regulatory determinant, rgg, increased the amount of GTF activity and GTF antibody-reactive protein ca. fivefold but did not confer a hard colony phenotype on sucrose agar plates, suggesting that the type of glucan product affects the sucrose-promoted colony phenotype.

Glucans synthesized by glucosyltransferase enzymes of oral streptococci facilitate bacterial accumulation on surfaces. The Streptococcus gordonii glucosyltransferase gene, gtfG, is positively regulated by rgg, which encodes a putative cytoplasmic protein. The gtfG promoter and ribosomal binding sequences are located within a DNA inverted repeat immediately downstream of rgg. Polycistronic rgg-gtfG as well as rgg-and gtfG-specific transcripts are associated with this chromosomal region. Previous studies have shown that the rgg product acts in trans near the gtfG promoter to increase the level of gtfG transcript, but it does not affect the level of rgg-gtfG transcript. To further analyze regulation by rgg, a series of strain Challis derivatives was constructed and glucosyltransferase activities were determined. Strains in which rgg was separated from gtfG by integrated vector sequences had decreased levels of glucosyltransferase activity; plasmid-borne rgg could not increase activity to parental levels. As expected, strains with chromosomal deletions involving the rgg structural gene and either the rgg or gtfG promoter also showed decreased glucosyltransferase activity. Plasmid-borne rgg could increase glucosyltransferase activity only in strains which had a 36-bp chromosomal region beginning 72 nucleotides upstream of the gtfG transcriptional start site. Results suggest that these nucleotides, located within the 3 end of rgg, are necessary, either by direct involvement in binding or by indirectly affecting secondary structure, for Rgg to increase glucosyltransferase activity. Surprisingly, the presence of the rgg promoter upstream of this 36-bp region significantly increased the effects of plasmid-borne rgg. Implications for glucosyltransferase regulation and applicability to other rgg-like determinants are considered.

Examination of the Streptococcus gordonii chromosomal region, which lies immediately upstream of the glucosyltransferase positive regulatory determinant rgg, revealed two open reading frames. Based on nucleotide sequences, these genes were similar to the Listeria monocytogenes lemA gene, which is involved in antigen presentation, and the Escherichia coli htpX heat shock gene, which has an unknown function. Northern hybridization analysis indicated that S. gordonii lemA and htpX genes were associated with a ca. 1.7-kb polycistronic transcript. Although levels of the lemA/htpX transcript did not increase in response to heat to levels seen with dnaK controls, insertional inactivation of htpX resulted in changes in adhesiveness, cellular morphology and detergent-extractable surface antigens in cells grown at 41 degrees C, implying that htpX may be involved in surface protein expression. Insertional inactivation of lemA and htpX indicated that, despite their proximity to rgg and the structural gene, gtfG, these upstream genes do not affect S. gordonii glucosyltransferase activity.

The Streptococcus gordonii glucosyltransferase gene, gtfG, is positively regulated by the upstream determinant rgg. In the present study, two ORFs, transcribed on the opposite DNA strand, were identified immediately downstream of gtfG. The first, designated dsg, shares a convergent putative transcriptional terminator with gtfG, and encodes a predicted 46 kDa transmembrane protein similar to the Yersinia enterocolitica TrsA involved in polysaccharide biosynthesis. Insertional inactivation of dsg resulted in only " " 60 % of the parental level of glucosyltransferase activity. The 870 bp gene 5' to dsg is similar to the gtfG regulatory determinant. Designated rggD, this rgglike determinant downstream of gtfG encodes a putative 336 kDa cytoplasmic protein. Despite their sequence similarity, the functions of rgg and rggD appear specific. Strains in which rggD was insertionally inactivated and strains containing plasmid-borne rggD had parental levels of glucosyltransferase activity. Northern blot hybridization analyses showed " 13 kb dsg-specific and " 10 kb rggD-specific mRNA transcripts associated with this region ; no polycistronic transcript was observed. Although rgg-like gene products have been demonstrated to function as positive transcriptional regulators of adjacent genes in several streptococcal species, Northern blot analysis suggested that rggD did not influence the transcription of dsg or the divergent downstream ylbN-like determinant under the conditions in the present study. Comparison of this S. gordonii chromosome region to other streptococcal genomes, which do not contain the rgg/rggD-flanked region involved in glucan synthesis, raised intriguing possibilities about the origins of this chromosomal region, and also suggested that rggD might regulate a distally located gene.