Evaluating the sensitivity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to biotin deprivation using regulated gene expression.

In the search for new drug targets, we evaluated the biotin synthetic pathway of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and constructed an Mtb mutant lacking the biotin biosynthetic enzyme 7,8-diaminopelargonic acid synthase, BioA. In biotin-free synthetic media, ΔbioA did not produce wild-type levels of biotinylated proteins, and therefore did not grow and lost viability. ΔbioA was also unable to establish infection in mice. Conditionally-regulated knockdown strains of Mtb similarly exhibited impaired bacterial growth and viability in vitro and in mice, irrespective of the timing of transcriptional silencing. Biochemical studies further showed that BioA activity has to be reduced by approximately 99% to prevent growth. These studies thus establish that de novo biotin synthesis is essential for Mtb to establish and maintain a chronic infection in a murine model of TB. Moreover, these studies provide an experimental strategy to systematically rank the in vivo value of potential drug targets in Mtb and other pathogens.

Improved tetracycline repressors for gene silencing in mycobacteria.

Tetracycline repressor (TetR)-controlled expression systems have recently been developed for mycobacteria and proven useful for the construction of conditional knockdown mutants and their analysis in vitro and during infections. However, even though these systems allowed tight regulation of some mycobacterial genes, they only showed limited or no phenotypic regulation for others. By adapting their codon usage to that of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome, we created tetR genes that mediate up to approximately 50-fold better repression of reporter gene activities in Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium bovis BCG. In addition to these repressors, for which anhydrotetracycline (atc) functions as an inducer of gene expression, we used codon-usage adaption and structure-based design to develop improved reverse TetRs, for which atc functions as a corepressor. The previously described reverse repressor TetR only functioned when expressed from a strong promoter on a multicopy plasmid. The new reverse TetRs silence target genes more efficiently and allowed complete phenotypic silencing of M. smegmatis secA1 with chromosomally integrated tetR genes.

Efficient and exclusive induction of Tet repressor by the oligopeptide Tip results from co-variation of their interaction site.

Protein-protein interactions are an important element of signal transfer within and between organisms. They are mainly mediated by short oligopeptide motifs and represent a widely used alternative to small, organic molecules for conveying information. The transcription factor TetR, a regulator of tetracycline resistance in Gram-negative bacteria, is naturally induced by tetracycline or its derivatives. The oligopeptide Tip (Transcription inducing peptide) fused to either N- or C-terminus of Thioredoxin A (TrxA) has been isolated as an artificial inducer for TetR in Escherichia coli. This inducing property can be exploited to monitor the in vivo expression of a protein of interest by fusing Tip to its C-terminus. We improve the induction efficiency of Tip by adding an aromatic amino acid before residue 1 of Tip in C-terminal fusions to TrxA. The induction efficiency of that modified TrxA-Tip fusion is further enhanced when the effector-binding pocket of TetR is enlarged by the N82A and F86A mutations. The double mutant is also insensitive to induction by tetracyclines. Thus, Tip is an exclusive inducer of this TetR variant, representing the first example of fully converting a small molecular weight effector-dependent transcription factor into one depending solely on protein-protein recognition.

Functionally important residues of the Tet repressor inducing peptide TIP determined by a complete mutational analysis.

Tet repressor (TetR) is widely used to control gene expression in pro- and eukaryotes. The mechanism of induction by its natural inducer tetracycline is well characterized. A 16-mer oligopeptide, called TIP, fused to thioredoxin A (TrxA) of Escherichia coli is an artificial inducer of TetR. We analyzed the sequence requirements of TIP by directed and random single amino acid substitutions and identified residues important for TetR induction. An alanine scanning analysis of the first twelve residues showed that all except the ones at position eleven and twelve are important for induction. A randomization of residues at positions one to twelve of TIP revealed the properties of each residue necessary for induction. These further insights into the specificity of TIP-TetR interaction are discussed in the light of the X-ray structure of the [TetR-TIP] complex. The last four residues of TIP contribute indirectly to TetR induction by increasing the steady-state level of the fusion protein. TIP mutants fused N-terminally or C-terminally to TrxA in E. coli induce with the same efficiency indicating identical binding and induction mechanisms, and the lack of contribution from TrxA.

How an agonist peptide mimics the antibiotic tetracycline to induce Tet-repressor.

A 16-residue peptide, called Tip, induces the tetracycline repressor TetR as efficiently as the antibiotic tetracycline when fused to the N or C terminus of another protein. This is unusual because the majority of in vitro selected peptides, such as Tip, inhibit protein function, and agonist peptides are only rarely identified. We elucidated the atomic mechanism of TetR induction by Tip from crystal structures of TetR in complex with Tip and of free TetR. Peptide induction ultimately results in the same movements of DNA reading heads, but Tip accomplishes this by very different molecular interactions from tetracycline involving important contacts to the TetR surface. As a direct consequence, an alternate pathway of allostery becomes possible that makes ample use of intersubunit interactions. For the first time it is possible to show in atomic detail how a small molecule controlled bacterial transcription factor such as TetR becomes responsive to protein-protein interactions, characteristic of gene transcription regulation in higher organisms.

Reaction of folic acid with reducing sugars and sugar degradation products.

The reaction of folic acid with reducing sugars (nonenzymatic glycation) under conditions that can occur during food processing and preparation was studied by high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection. N-(p-Aminobenzoyl)-L-glutamic acid, a well-established oxidation product, was detected in the reaction mixtures. Furthermore, a new product was isolated and identified as N2-[1-(carboxyethyl)]folic acid (CEF). CEF was the main product that was formed by the nonenzymatic glycation of folic acid. For preparation, N2-[1-(carboxyethyl)]folic acid was obtained in high yields when folic acid and dihydroxyacetone (DHA), a sugar degradation product, were heated at 100 degrees C in phosphate buffer. Mixtures of folic acid and different sugars or DHA were heated under variation of reaction time and temperature, and CEF was quantified. Up to 50% of the vitamin was converted to CEF, with highest yields formed from maltose (49%) and lactose (43%).

A novel TetR-regulating peptide turns off rtTA-mediated activation of gene expression.

Conditional regulation of gene expression is a powerful and indispensable method for analyzing gene function. The "Tet-On" system is a tool widely used for that purpose. Here, the transregulator rtTA mediates expression of a gene of interest after addition of the small molecule effector doxycycline. Although very effective in rapidly turning on gene expression, the system is hampered by the long half-life of doxycycline which makes shutting down gene expression rapidly very difficult to achieve. We isolated an rtTA-binding peptide by in vivo selection that acts as a doxycycline antagonist and leads to rapid and efficient shut down of rtTA-mediated reporter gene expression in a human cell line. This peptide represents the basis for novel effector molecules which complement the "Tet-system" by enabling the investigator to rapidly turn gene expression not just on at will, but now also off.

A novel method to analyze nucleocytoplasmic transport in vivo by using short peptide tags.

Regulated nucleocytoplasmic transport is of vital importance for maintaining the physiology of the cell, and disturbed nucleocytoplasmic shuttling of certain proteins has been found in a variety of diseases including cancer. The most frequently used procedure to analyze those processes is to fuse the protein of interest to a fluorescent protein such as GFP (green fluorescent protein)--a technique that is prone to impair normal protein function and subcellular localization. We report a novel approach to monitor nucleocytoplasmic transport processes in vivo by combining short TetR inducing peptide tags (TIP) with a TetR-controlled reporter gene in a human cell line. The technology is exemplified by demonstrating nucleocytoplasmic shuttling of the glucocorticoid receptor and activity of two further TIP fusions to cancer-related proteins. The technology presented provides the basis for efficient screening systems to isolate compounds altering the nucleocytoplasmic distribution of a protein of interest.

Protein expression can be monitored in yeast by peptide-mediated induction of TetR-controlled gene expression.

The rapidly increasing number of completed genome sequences urgently calls for convenient and efficient methods for analysis of gene function and expression. TetR-inducing peptides (TIP) can induce reporter gene expression controlled by Tet repressor (TetR) when fused to a protein of choice which makes them a highly valuable tool for monitoring expression in vivo. However, TIP functionality has only been demonstrated in bacteria so far. Here, we report that TIP is also functional in yeast. An mCherry-TIP fusion that locates to the nucleus induces TetR-controlled gfp+ expression in a dose-dependent manner. This opens up potential applications in proteome research in which the expression of proteins can be analyzed in vivo by fusing TIP to proteins of choice in conjunction with a Tet-controlled reporter system.

Short peptides act as inducers, anti-inducers and corepressors of Tet repressor.

Protein allostery plays a pivotal role in many regulatory processes. Prominent examples are cell-surface receptors, which allosterically transmit ligand-generated signals to their cytoplasmic domains, or bacterial transcription factors, which alternate between a free conformation and a DNA-bound conformation in response to binding an effector molecule. The bacterial transcription factor Tet repressor (TetR) belongs to the latter category and is regarded as highly adapted to tetracyclines (tc's) as effectors. However, peptides isolated in this study were able to trigger distinct allosteric behavior including induction, anti-induction and corepression. Binding of the peptides' C-terminal residues consistently occurs within the tc-binding pocket of TetR. However, an extensive analysis of TetR mutants revealed that inducing and anti-inducing peptides utilize different parts of the binding pocket to elicit their respective regulatory responses. This study demonstrates that even for transcription factors evolved for high effector specificity, alternative molecular structures can exert similar and even novel effects, provided that sufficient chemical diversity and molecular flexibility, as found in peptide libraries, is accompanied by an efficient in vivo selection system. The high number of bioactive peptides and their extensive sequence diversity suggests that switching from small-molecule-controlled transcription regulation to a signal transduction network might be rather easily accomplished. These findings will strongly affect protein-mediated regulation of gene expression.

An RNA aptamer that induces transcription.

We identified an RNA aptamer that induces TetR-controlled gene expression in Escherichia coli when expressed in the cell. The aptamer was found by a combined approach of in vitro selection for TetR binding and in vivo screening for TetR induction. The smallest active aptamer folds into a stem-loop with an internal loop interrupting the stem. Mutational analysis in vivo and in-line probing in vitro reveal this loop to be the protein binding site. The TetR-inducing activity of the aptamer directly correlates with its stability and the best construct is as efficient as the natural inducer tetracycline. Because of its small size, high induction efficiency, and the stability of the TetR aptamer under in vivo conditions, it is well suited to be an alternative RNA-based inducer of TetR-controlled gene expression.

Silencing Mycobacterium smegmatis by using tetracycline repressors.

Many processes that are essential for mycobacterial growth are poorly understood. To facilitate genetic analyses of such processes in mycobacteria, we and others have developed regulated expression systems that are repressed by a tetracycline repressor (TetR) and induced with tetracyclines, permitting the construction of conditional mutants of essential genes. A disadvantage of these systems is that tetracyclines function as transcriptional inducers and have to be removed to initiate gene silencing. Recently, reverse TetR mutants were identified that require tetracyclines as co-repressors. Here, we report that one of these mutants, TetR r1.7, allows efficient repression of lacZ expression in Mycobacterium smegmatis in the presence but not the absence of anhydrotetracycline (atc). TetR and TetR r1.7 also allowed efficient silencing of the essential secA1 gene, as demonstrated by inhibition of the growth of a conditional mutant and dose-dependent depletion of the SecA1 protein after the removal or addition, respectively, of atc. The kinetics of SecA1 depletion were similar with TetR and TetR r1.7. To test whether silencing of secA1 could help identify substrates of the general secretion pathway, we analyzed the main porin of M. smegmatis, MspA. This showed that the amount of cell envelope-associated MspA decreased more than 90-fold after secA1 silencing. We thus demonstrated that TetR r1.7 allows the construction of conditional mycobacterial mutants in which the expression of an essential gene can be efficiently silenced by the addition of atc and that gene silencing permits the identification of candidate substrates of mycobacterial secretion systems.

A peptide triggers allostery in tet repressor by binding to a unique site.

Regulatory proteins often communicate with each other to manage various cellular processes. Such interactions mostly rely on the recognition of small peptide motifs. The activity of other regulatory proteins depends on small molecular weight effectors and allostery. We demonstrate the in vivo regulation of the tetracycline-dependent Tet repressor by an oligopeptide fused to the N or C terminus of thioredoxin A. The binding site of the peptide overlaps but is not identical with the tetracycline binding site. Several TetR mutants that are non-inducible by tetracycline also respond to the peptide. This demonstrates for the first time the conversion of a small molecular weight effector-dependent regulator to a protein-protein contact-dependent potential member of designed signaling chains.