TY  - JOUR
A1  - Demolli, Shemsi
A1  - Geist, Miriam M.
A1  - Weigand, Julia E.
A1  - Matschiavelli, Nicole
A1  - Süß, Beatrix
A1  - Rother, Michael
T1  - Development of β-lactamase as a tool for monitoring conditional gene expression by a tetracycline-riboswitch in Methanosarcina acetivorans
T2  - Archaea
N2  - The use of reporter gene fusions to assess cellular processes such as protein targeting and regulation of transcription or translation is established technology in archaeal, bacterial, and eukaryal genetics. Fluorescent proteins or enzymes resulting in chromogenic substrate turnover, like β -galactosidase, have been particularly useful for microscopic and screening purposes. However, application of such methodology is of limited use for strictly anaerobic organisms due to the requirement of molecular oxygen for chromophore formation or color development. We have developed β -lactamase from Escherichia coli (encoded by bla) in conjunction with the chromogenic substrate nitrocefin into a reporter system usable under anaerobic conditions for the methanogenic archaeon Methanosarcina acetivorans. By using a signal peptide of a putative flagellin from M. acetivorans and different catabolic promoters, we could demonstrate growth substrate-dependent secretion of β -lactamase, facilitating its use in colony screening on agar plates. Furthermore, a series of fusions comprised of a constitutive promoter and sequences encoding variants of the synthetic tetracycline-responsive riboswitch (tc-RS) was created to characterize its influence on translation initiation in M. acetivorans. One tc-RS variant resulted in more than 11-fold tetracycline-dependent regulation of bla expression, which is in the range of regulation by naturally occurring riboswitches. Thus, tc-RS fusions represent the first solely cis-active, that is, factor-independent system for controlled gene expression in Archaea.
Y1  - 2014
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/33350
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-333501
SN  - 1472-3646
SN  - 1472-3654
N1  - Copyright © 2014 Shemsi Demolli et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 2014
IS  - Article ID 725610
SP  - 1
EP  - 10
PB  - Hindawi
CY  - New York, NY
ER  -