scholarly journals Uncoupling of the Diurnal Growth Program by Artificial Genome Relaxation in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Behle ◽  
Maximilian Dietsch ◽  
Louis Goldschmidt ◽  
Wandana Murugathas ◽  
David Brandt ◽  
...  

In cyanobacteria DNA supercoiling varies over the diurnal light/dark cycle and is integrated with temporal programs of transcription and replication. We manipulated DNA supercoiling in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 by CRISPRi-based knock-down of gyrase subunits and overexpression of topoisomerase I, and characterized the phenotypes. Cell division was blocked, most likely due to inhibition of genomic but not plasmid DNA replication. Cell growth continued to 4-5x of the wildtype cell volume, and metabolic flux was redirected towards glycogen in the topoI overexpession strain. Topoisomerase I induction initially lead to down-regulation of GC-rich and up-regulation of AT-rich genes. The response quickly bifurcated and four diurnal co-expression cohorts (dawn, noon, dusk and night) all responded differently, in part with a circadian (≈24 h) pattern. We suggest a model where energy- and gyrase-gated transcription of growth genes at the dark/light transition (dawn) generates DNA supercoiling which then directly facilitates DNA replication and initiates the diurnal transcriptome program.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salima Rüdiger ◽  
Anne Rediger ◽  
Adrian Kölsch ◽  
Dennis Dienst ◽  
Ilka Maria Axmann ◽  
...  

In cyanobacteria DNA supercoiling varies over the diurnal light/dark cycle and is integrated with the circadian transcription program and (Woelfle et al. [2007], Vijayan et al. [2009], PNAS). Specifically, Woelfle et al. have reported that DNA supercoiling of an endogenous plasmid became progressively higher during prolonged dark phases in Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942. This is counterintuitive, since higher levels of negative DNA supercoiling are commonly associated with exponential growth and high metabolic flux. Vijayan et al. then have reverted the interpretation of plasmid mobility on agarose gels supplemented with chloroquine diphosphate (CQ), but not further discussed the differences. Here, we set out to clarify this open issue in cyanobacterial DNA supercoiling dynamics. We first re-capitulate Keller's band counting method (1975, PNAS) using CQ instead of ethidium bromide as the intercalating agent. A 500x-1000x higher CQ concentration is required in the DNA relaxation reaction (topoisomerase I) than in the agarose gel buffer to quench all negative supercoiling of pUC19 extracted from Escherichia coli. This is likely due to the dependence of both, the DNA binding affinity of CQ and the induced DNA unwinding angle, on the ionic strength of the buffer. Lower levels of CQ were required to fully relax in vivo pUC19 supercoiling than were used by Woelfle et al. Next, we analyzed the in vivo supercoiling of endogenous plasmids of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, at two different CQ concentrations. This clearly indicates that negative supercoiling of plasmids does not increase but decreases in the dark phase, and progressively decreases further in prolonged darkness.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Krishna Leela ◽  
Nalini Raghunathan ◽  
J Gowrishankar

Topoisomerase I (Topo I) of Escherichia coli , encoded by topA , acts to relax negative supercoils in DNA. Topo I deficiency results in hypernegative supercoiling, formation of transcription-associated RNA-DNA hybrids (R-loops), and DnaA- and oriC -independent constitutive stable DNA replication (cSDR), but some uncertainty persists as to whether topA is essential for viability in E. coli and related enterobacteria. Here we show that several topA alleles, including Δ topA , confer lethality in derivatives of wild-type E. coli strain MG1655. Viability in absence of Topo I was restored with two perturbations, neither of which reversed the hypernegative supercoiling phenotype: (i) in a reduced-genome strain MDS42, or (ii) by an RNA polymerase (RNAP) mutation rpoB*35 that has been reported to alleviate the deleterious consequences of RNAP backtracking and transcription-replication conflicts. Four phenotypes related to cSDR were identified for topA mutants: (i) One of the topA alleles rescued Δ dnaA lethality; (ii) in dnaA + derivatives, Topo I deficiency generated a characteristic copy number peak in the terminus region of the chromosome; (iii) topA was synthetically lethal with rnhA (encoding RNase HI, whose deficiency also confers cSDR); and (iv) topA rnhA synthetic lethality was itself rescued by Δ dnaA . We propose that the terminal lethal consequence of hypernegative DNA supercoiling in E. coli topA mutants is RNAP backtracking during transcription elongation and associated R-loop formation, which in turn lead to transcription-replication conflicts and to cSDR. Importance In all life forms, double helical DNA exists in a topologically supercoiled state. The enzymes DNA gyrase and topoisomerase I act, respectively, to introduce and to relax negative DNA supercoils in Escherichia coli . That gyrase deficiency leads to bacterial death is well established, but the essentiality of topoisomerase I for viability has been less certain. This study confirms that topoisomerase I is essential for E. coli viability, and suggests that in its absence aberrant chromosomal DNA replication and excessive transcription-replication conflicts occur that are responsible for lethality.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Pardo ◽  
María Moriel-Carretero ◽  
Thibaud Vicat ◽  
Andrés Aguilera ◽  
Philippe Pasero

ABSTRACTImpediments to DNA replication threaten genome stability. The homologous recombination (HR) pathway is involved in the restart of blocked replication forks. Here, we used a new method to study at the molecular level the restart of replication in response to DNA topoisomerase I poisoning by camptothecin (CPT). We show that HR-mediated restart at the global genomic level occurs by a BIR-like mechanism that requires Rad52, Rad51 and Pol32. The Mus81 endonuclease, previously proposed to cleave blocked forks, is not required for replication restart in S phase but appears to be essential to resolve fork-associated recombination intermediates in G2/M as a step necessary to complete replication. We confirmed our results using an independent system that allowed us to conclude that this mechanism is independent of the accumulation of DNA supercoiling and DNA-protein crosslinks normally caused by CPT. Thus, we describe here a specific function for Mus81 in the processing of HR-restarted forks required to complete DNA replication.


2003 ◽  
Vol 185 (3) ◽  
pp. 1097-1100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yazmid Reyes-Domínguez ◽  
Gabriel Contreras-Ferrat ◽  
Jesús Ramírez-Santos ◽  
Jorge Membrillo-Hernández ◽  
M. Carmen Gómez-Eichelmann

ABSTRACT Stationary-phase cells displayed a distribution of relaxed plasmids and had the ability to recover plasmid supercoiling as soon as nutrients became available. Preexisting gyrase molecules in these cells were responsible for this recovery. Stationary-phase rpoS cells showed a bimodal distribution of plasmids and failed to supercoil plasmids after the addition of nutrients, suggesting that rpoS plays a role in the regulation of plasmid topology during the stationary phase.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martyna Gongerowska-Jac ◽  
Marcin Jan Szafran ◽  
Jakub Mikołajczyk ◽  
Justyna Szymczak ◽  
Magdalena Bartyńska ◽  
...  

Bacterial gene expression is controlled at multiple levels, with chromosome supercoiling being one of the most global regulators. Global DNA supercoiling is maintained by the orchestrated action of topoisomerases. In Streptomyces, mycelial soil bacteria with a complex life cycle, topoisomerase I depletion led to elevated chromosome supercoiling, changed expression of significant fraction of genes, delayed growth and blocked sporulation. To identify supercoiling-induced sporulation regulators, we searched for S. coelicolor transposon mutants that were able to restore sporulation despite high chromosome supercoiling. We established that transposon insertion in genes encoding a novel two-component system named SatKR reversed the sporulation blockage resulting from topoisomerase I depletion. Transposition in satKR abolished the transcriptional induction of the genes within the so-called supercoiling-hypersensitive cluster (SHC). Moreover, we found that activated SatR also induced the same set of SHC genes under normal supercoiling conditions. We determined that the expression of genes in this region impacted S. coelicolor growth and sporulation. Interestingly, among the associated products is another two-component system (SitKR), indicating the potential for cascading regulatory effects driven by the SatKR and SitKR two-component systems. Thus, we demonstrated the concerted activity of chromosome supercoiling and a hierarchical two-component signalling system that impacts gene activity governing Streptomyces growth and sporulation.


1982 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 833-853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Günter Hillenbrand ◽  
Walter L. Staudenbauer

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefani C. Kary ◽  
Joshua R. K. Yoneda ◽  
Stephen C. Olshefsky ◽  
Laura A. Stewart ◽  
Steven B. West ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Fluoroquinolone antibiotics are prescribed for the treatment of Salmonella enterica infections, but resistance to this family of antibiotics is growing. Here we report that loss of the global regulatory protein cyclic AMP (cAMP) receptor protein (CRP) or its allosteric effector, cAMP, reduces susceptibility to fluoroquinolones. A Δcrp mutation was synergistic with the primary fluoroquinolone resistance allele gyrA83, thus able to contribute to clinically relevant resistance. Decreased susceptibility to fluoroquinolones could be partly explained by decreased expression of the outer membrane porin genes ompA and ompF with a concomitant increase in the expression of the ciprofloxacin resistance efflux pump gene acrB in Δcrp cells. Expression of gyrAB, which encode the DNA supercoiling enzyme GyrAB, which is blocked by fluoroquinolones, and expression of topA, which encodes the dominant supercoiling-relaxing enzyme topoisomerase I, were unchanged in Δcrp cells. Yet Δcrp cells maintained a more relaxed state of DNA supercoiling, correlating with an observed increase in topoisomerase IV (parCE) expression. Surprisingly, the Δcrp mutation had the unanticipated effect of enhancing fitness in the presence of fluoroquinolone antibiotics, which can be explained by the observation that exposure of Δcrp cells to ciprofloxacin had the counterintuitive effect of restoring wild-type levels of DNA supercoiling. Consistent with this, Δcrp cells did not become elongated or induce the SOS response when challenged with ciprofloxacin. These findings implicate the combined action of multiple drug resistance mechanisms in Δcrp cells: reduced permeability and elevated efflux of fluoroquinolones coupled with a relaxed DNA supercoiling state that buffers cells against GyrAB inhibition by fluoroquinolones.


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