1887

Abstract

, a Gram-positive soil bacterium employed in the industrial production of various amino acids, is able to use a number of different nitrogen sources, such as ammonium, urea or creatinine. This study shows that -glutamine serves as an excellent nitrogen source for and allows similar growth rates in glucose minimal medium to those in ammonium. A transcriptome comparison revealed that the nitrogen starvation response was elicited when glutamine served as the sole nitrogen source, meaning that the target genes of the global nitrogen regulator AmtR were derepressed. Subsequent growth experiments with a variety of mutants defective in nitrogen metabolism showed that glutamate synthase is crucial for glutamine utilization, while a putative glutaminase is dispensable under the experimental conditions used. The operon encoding the glutamate synthase is a member of the AmtR regulon. The observation that the nitrogen starvation response was elicited at high intracellular -glutamine levels has implications for nitrogen sensing. In contrast with other Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria such as , serovar Typhimurium and , a drop in glutamine concentration obviously does not serve as a nitrogen starvation signal in

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2010-10-01
2024-10-05
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