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Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors

Bacteria from the orders Bacillales and Clostridiales differentiate into stress-resistant spores that can remain dormant for years, yet rapidly germinate upon nutrient sensing. How spores monitor nutrients is poorly understood but in most cases requires putative membrane receptors. The prototypical...

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Autores principales: Artzi, Lior, Alon, Assaf, Brock, Kelly P., Green, Anna G., Tam, Amy, Ramírez-Guadiana, Fernando H., Marks, Debora, Kruse, Andrew, Rudner, David Z.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8617281/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34824238
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27235-2
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author Artzi, Lior
Alon, Assaf
Brock, Kelly P.
Green, Anna G.
Tam, Amy
Ramírez-Guadiana, Fernando H.
Marks, Debora
Kruse, Andrew
Rudner, David Z.
author_facet Artzi, Lior
Alon, Assaf
Brock, Kelly P.
Green, Anna G.
Tam, Amy
Ramírez-Guadiana, Fernando H.
Marks, Debora
Kruse, Andrew
Rudner, David Z.
author_sort Artzi, Lior
collection PubMed
description Bacteria from the orders Bacillales and Clostridiales differentiate into stress-resistant spores that can remain dormant for years, yet rapidly germinate upon nutrient sensing. How spores monitor nutrients is poorly understood but in most cases requires putative membrane receptors. The prototypical receptor from Bacillus subtilis consists of three proteins (GerAA, GerAB, GerAC) required for germination in response to L-alanine. GerAB belongs to the Amino Acid-Polyamine-Organocation superfamily of transporters. Using evolutionary co-variation analysis, we provide evidence that GerAB adopts a structure similar to an L-alanine transporter from this superfamily. We show that mutations in gerAB predicted to disrupt the ligand-binding pocket impair germination, while mutations predicted to function in L-alanine recognition enable spores to respond to L-leucine or L-serine. Finally, substitutions of bulkier residues at these positions cause constitutive germination. These data suggest that GerAB is the L-alanine sensor and that B subunits in this broadly conserved family function in nutrient detection.
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spelling pubmed-86172812021-12-10 Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors Artzi, Lior Alon, Assaf Brock, Kelly P. Green, Anna G. Tam, Amy Ramírez-Guadiana, Fernando H. Marks, Debora Kruse, Andrew Rudner, David Z. Nat Commun Article Bacteria from the orders Bacillales and Clostridiales differentiate into stress-resistant spores that can remain dormant for years, yet rapidly germinate upon nutrient sensing. How spores monitor nutrients is poorly understood but in most cases requires putative membrane receptors. The prototypical receptor from Bacillus subtilis consists of three proteins (GerAA, GerAB, GerAC) required for germination in response to L-alanine. GerAB belongs to the Amino Acid-Polyamine-Organocation superfamily of transporters. Using evolutionary co-variation analysis, we provide evidence that GerAB adopts a structure similar to an L-alanine transporter from this superfamily. We show that mutations in gerAB predicted to disrupt the ligand-binding pocket impair germination, while mutations predicted to function in L-alanine recognition enable spores to respond to L-leucine or L-serine. Finally, substitutions of bulkier residues at these positions cause constitutive germination. These data suggest that GerAB is the L-alanine sensor and that B subunits in this broadly conserved family function in nutrient detection. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-11-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8617281/ /pubmed/34824238 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27235-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Artzi, Lior
Alon, Assaf
Brock, Kelly P.
Green, Anna G.
Tam, Amy
Ramírez-Guadiana, Fernando H.
Marks, Debora
Kruse, Andrew
Rudner, David Z.
Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors
title Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors
title_full Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors
title_fullStr Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors
title_full_unstemmed Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors
title_short Dormant spores sense amino acids through the B subunits of their germination receptors
title_sort dormant spores sense amino acids through the b subunits of their germination receptors
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8617281/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34824238
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27235-2
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