Overexpression of the third H-NS paralogue H-NS2 compensates fitness loss in hns mutants of the enteroaggregative Escherichia coli strain 042

Members of the H-NS protein family play a role both in the chromosome architecture and in the regulation of gene expression in bacteria. The genomes of the enterobacteria encode an H-NS paralogue, the StpA protein. StpA displays specific regulatory properties and provides a molecular backup for H-NS. Some enterobacteria also encode third H-NS paralogues. This is the case of the enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) strain 042, which encodes the hns, stpA and hns2 genes. We provide in this paper novel information about the role of the H-NS2 protein in strain 042. A C > T transition in the hns2 promoter leading to increased H-NS2 expression is readily selected in hns mutants. Increased H-NS2 expression partially compensates for H-NS loss. H-NS2 levels are critical for the strain 042 fitness. Under some circumstances, high H-NS2 expression levels dictated by the mutant hns2 promoter can be deleterious. The selection of T > C revertants or of clones harboring insertional inactivations of the hns2 gene can then occur. Temperature also plays a relevant role in the H-NS2 regulatory activity. At 37 °C, H-NS2 targets a subset of the H-NS repressed genes contributing to their silencing. When temperature drops to 25 °C, the repressory ability of H-NS2 is significantly reduced. At low temperature, H-NS plays the main repressory role.