The mechanism of upstream activation in the operon of is different from the paradigm Free

Abstract

Mycobacteria are slow-growing bacteria with a generation time of from 2–3 h up to several weeks. Consistent with the low growth rate, mycobacterial species have a maximum of two rRNA operons, and . The operon is present in all mycobacteria and has between two and five promoters, depending on species, whereas the operon, with a single promoter, is only found in some of the faster-growing species. The promoter region of the operon of a typical fast grower, , was investigated. By using reporter gene fusions it was demonstrated that the operon contains a highly activating region upstream of the core promoter, comparable to other bacterial operons. However, the results suggest that, unlike the situation in, for example, , the activating mechanism is solely factor dependent, and that no UP element is involved.

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2005-02-01
2024-03-29
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