Cargando…

H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria

Histone-like nucleoid structuring protein (H-NS) is a modular protein that is associated with the bacterial nucleoid. We used chromatin immunoprecipitation to determine the binding sites of H-NS and RNA polymerase on the Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium chromosome. We found that H-NS does not...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lucchini, Sacha, Rowley, Gary, Goldberg, Martin D, Hurd, Douglas, Harrison, Marcus, Hinton, Jay C. D
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550270/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16933988
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.0020081
_version_ 1782129216955875328
author Lucchini, Sacha
Rowley, Gary
Goldberg, Martin D
Hurd, Douglas
Harrison, Marcus
Hinton, Jay C. D
author_facet Lucchini, Sacha
Rowley, Gary
Goldberg, Martin D
Hurd, Douglas
Harrison, Marcus
Hinton, Jay C. D
author_sort Lucchini, Sacha
collection PubMed
description Histone-like nucleoid structuring protein (H-NS) is a modular protein that is associated with the bacterial nucleoid. We used chromatin immunoprecipitation to determine the binding sites of H-NS and RNA polymerase on the Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium chromosome. We found that H-NS does not bind to actively transcribed genes and does not co-localize with RNA polymerase. This shows that H-NS principally silences gene expression by restricting the access of RNA polymerase to the DNA. H-NS had previously been shown to preferentially bind to curved DNA in vitro. In fact, at the genomic level we discovered that the level of H-NS binding correlates better with the AT-content of DNA. This is likely to have evolutionary consequences because we show that H-NS binds to many Salmonella genes acquired by lateral gene transfer, and functions as a gene silencer. The removal of H-NS from the cell causes un-controlled expression of several Salmonella pathogenicity islands, and we demonstrate that this has deleterious consequences for bacterial fitness. Our discovery of this novel role for H-NS may have implications for the acquisition of foreign genes by enteric bacteria.
format Text
id pubmed-1550270
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2006
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-15502702006-09-07 H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria Lucchini, Sacha Rowley, Gary Goldberg, Martin D Hurd, Douglas Harrison, Marcus Hinton, Jay C. D PLoS Pathog Research Article Histone-like nucleoid structuring protein (H-NS) is a modular protein that is associated with the bacterial nucleoid. We used chromatin immunoprecipitation to determine the binding sites of H-NS and RNA polymerase on the Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium chromosome. We found that H-NS does not bind to actively transcribed genes and does not co-localize with RNA polymerase. This shows that H-NS principally silences gene expression by restricting the access of RNA polymerase to the DNA. H-NS had previously been shown to preferentially bind to curved DNA in vitro. In fact, at the genomic level we discovered that the level of H-NS binding correlates better with the AT-content of DNA. This is likely to have evolutionary consequences because we show that H-NS binds to many Salmonella genes acquired by lateral gene transfer, and functions as a gene silencer. The removal of H-NS from the cell causes un-controlled expression of several Salmonella pathogenicity islands, and we demonstrate that this has deleterious consequences for bacterial fitness. Our discovery of this novel role for H-NS may have implications for the acquisition of foreign genes by enteric bacteria. Public Library of Science 2006-08 2006-08-18 /pmc/articles/PMC1550270/ /pubmed/16933988 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.0020081 Text en © 2006 Lucchini et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lucchini, Sacha
Rowley, Gary
Goldberg, Martin D
Hurd, Douglas
Harrison, Marcus
Hinton, Jay C. D
H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria
title H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria
title_full H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria
title_fullStr H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria
title_full_unstemmed H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria
title_short H-NS Mediates the Silencing of Laterally Acquired Genes in Bacteria
title_sort h-ns mediates the silencing of laterally acquired genes in bacteria
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1550270/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16933988
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.0020081
work_keys_str_mv AT lucchinisacha hnsmediatesthesilencingoflaterallyacquiredgenesinbacteria
AT rowleygary hnsmediatesthesilencingoflaterallyacquiredgenesinbacteria
AT goldbergmartind hnsmediatesthesilencingoflaterallyacquiredgenesinbacteria
AT hurddouglas hnsmediatesthesilencingoflaterallyacquiredgenesinbacteria
AT harrisonmarcus hnsmediatesthesilencingoflaterallyacquiredgenesinbacteria
AT hintonjaycd hnsmediatesthesilencingoflaterallyacquiredgenesinbacteria