† These authors contributed equally to this paper.
‡Present address: Imperial College London, Department of Life Sciences, MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
§Present address: Instituto de Hortofruticultura Subtropical y Mediterránea ‘La Mayora’, Universidad de Málaga-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (IHSM-UMA-CSIC), 29010 Malaga, Spain.
The CbrA/B system in pseudomonads is involved in the utilization of carbon sources and carbon catabolite repression (CCR) through the activation of the small RNAs crcZ in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and crcZ and crcY in Pseudomonas putida. Interestingly, previous works reported that the CbrA/B system activity in P. aeruginosa PAO1 and P. putida KT2442 responded differently to the presence of different carbon sources, thus raising the question of the exact nature of the signal(s) detected by CbrA. Here, we demonstrated that the CbrA/B/CrcZ(Y) signal transduction pathway is similarly activated in the two Pseudomonas species. We show that the CbrA sensor kinase is fully interchangeable between the two species and, moreover, responds similarly to the presence of different carbon sources. In addition, a metabolomics analysis supported the hypothesis that CCR responds to the internal energy status of the cell, as the internal carbon/nitrogen ratio seems to determine CCR and non-CCR conditions. The strong difference found in the 2-oxoglutarate/glutamine ratio between CCR and non-CCR conditions points to the close relationship between carbon and nitrogen availability, or the relationship between the CbrA/B and NtrB/C systems, suggesting that both regulatory systems sense the same sort or interrelated signal.
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Funding
This study was supported by the:
Sandoz Family Foundation (Programme for Academic Promotion)
Swiss National Foundation for Scientific Research
(Award 31003A-127587)
CSIC
EMBO
(Award ASTF 181-2012)
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/European Regional Development Fund
(Award CSD2007-00005) and BIO2011- 24003)
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