S. Chakrabarti et al., Role of DnaK in in vitro and in vivo expression of virulence factors of Vibrio cholerae, INFEC IMMUN, 67(3), 1999, pp. 1025-1033
The dnaK gene of Vibrio cholerae was cloned, sequenced, and used to constru
ct a dnaK insertion mutant which was then used to examine the role of DnaK
in expression of the major virulence factors of this important human pathog
en. The central regulator of several virulence genes of V. cholerae is ToxR
, a transmembrane DNA binding protein. The V. cholerae dnaK mutant grown in
standard laboratory medium exhibited phenotypes characteristic of cells de
ficient in ToxR activity. Using Northern blot analysis and toxR transcripti
onal fusions, we demonstrated a reduction in expression of the toxR gene in
the dnaK mutant strain together with a concomitant increase in expression
of a htpG-like heat shock gene that is located immediately upstream and is
divergently transcribed from toxR. This may be due to increased heat shock
induction in the dnaK mutant. In vivo, however, although expression from he
at shock promoters in the dnaK mutant was similar to that observed in vitro
, expression of both toxR and htpG was comparable to that by the parental s
train. In both strains, in vivo expression of toxR was significantly higher
than that observed in vitro, but no reciprocal decrease In htpG expression
was observed. These results suggest that the modulation of toxR expression
in vivo may be different from that observed in vitro.