After moving an oxygen-respiring culture of to nitrate or nitrite respiration, we directly monitored the expression of the gene by mRNA analysis. of buy 761423-87-4 the operon occurs at a higher partial oxygen pressure than that at which the other reductase genes are activated (24, 25). By monitoring the production of and transcripts of operon. The numerous studies directed at these transcription factors have provided a detailed mechanistic picture of anaerobic and nitrate-dependent gene activation in a nitrate-respiring bacterium (reviewed in references 19 and 20). Moreover, a crystal structure for the nitrate response regulator NarL has been reported recently (7). It is unknown which by monitoring the kinetics of individual transcripts rather than by using reporter gene fusions. In the present study, we investigated the signal and regulator requirements for the transcriptional activation of (i.e., the structural genes for the three reductases involved in nitrite denitrification) following a shifting of the respiratory metabolism from oxygen to nitrate or nitrite. By studying and deletion mutants, we obtained evidence for the existence of a second nitrate- and nitrite-responsive regulatory system in that is specific for denitrification. A preliminary account of this work has appeared previously (21). MATERIALS AND METHODS Bacterial strains and growth conditions. Wild-type traits of ATCC 14405 are represented in this study by the spontaneously streptomycin-resistant strain MK21 (36). was grown on synthetic asparagine-citrate medium at 30C (36). For aerated cultures, 500 ml of medium in a 1-liter flask was inoculated with an overnight culture to an optical density at 660 nm of about 0.2 and incubated inside a gyratory shaker in 240 rpm. Denitrification was induced with the addition of sodium nitrate (0.1%) or sodium nitrite (0.05%) and simultaneously moving to strongly O2-limited circumstances by reducing the shaker acceleration to 120 rpm. When required, kanamycin, ampicillin, or streptomycin was added at your final focus of 50, 100, or 200 g ml?1, respectively. Nitrite within the tradition medium was assessed as an azo dye (32). Isolation of RNA and buy 761423-87-4 North blot evaluation. Total RNA was extracted from batch ethnicities from the hot-phenol technique, with 10- or 20-ml examples being used at appropriate period intervals through the changeover from aerobic to denitrifying development circumstances (1). Twenty micrograms of RNA from each test was denatured by glyoxal-dimethyl sulfoxide treatment and separated on the 1.2% agarose gel (26). Equivalent loading of examples onto the gel was confirmed by acridine orange staining from the rRNA. Transfer of RNA to some positively billed nylon membrane (Boehringer Mannheim) was attained by upwards capillary actions. DNA probes had been tagged with dUTP-digoxigenin by arbitrary priming. The probe was produced by probe, as well as the probe was acquired like a 500-bp transcript was mapped by primer expansion (6). Invert buy 761423-87-4 transcription was initiated through the -32P 5-tagged primer 5-ATCAGGCCAGCCAGGATAGG-3, that was complementary towards the coding strand at positions 267 to 286 from the released series (23). The nucleotide series was acquired from the dideoxy string termination technique, utilizing a Thermo-Sequenase package (USA Biochemical Corp.), [35S]dATP (Amersham), as well as the same primer. The primer expansion and sequencing response products were examined on a 6% denaturing polyacrylamide gel. Construction of and deletion strains. The gene region was obtained from cosmid clones of by using the vectors pJA1 (12) and SuperCos1 (Stratagene). An 892-bp fragment of cosmid c164 with the complete gene (22) buy 761423-87-4 was amplified with the primers 5-GCAAAGCTTCGGCCTGAAGAACAGCG-3 and 5-TCGAATTCTTGAGCGATTGCGCACAG-3. The primers added gene was designated pUCnarL. The kanamycin resistance (Kmr) cassette was excised from plasmid pBSL15 (2) and used to replace a 358-bp cosmid g279 into pBluescriptII SK(?). The TP53 locus was mutated by replacing a 520-bp internal mutant MRL118 and the mutant MRX119, resulting from double-crossover events, were obtained by selection for kanamycin resistance and ampicillin buy 761423-87-4 sensitivity. Mutational inactivation of the genes was verified by sequencing and Southern hybridization. MRL118 was negative with the fragment as a probe and gave a single hybridizing 2.8-kb fragment with the Kmr probe in a genomic fragment (wild-type size, 2.4 kb) was detected in a genomic is part of an operon. We identified the transcript in the total-RNA fraction of cells grown under denitrifying conditions to monitor the expression pattern of nitrite reductase at the mRNA level. A 0.5-kb was used as hybridization probe (Fig. ?(Fig.1).1). In Northern blot analyses, two.