Cyanide is an inhibitor of heme-copper oxidases, which are required for aerobic respiration in all eukaryotes and many prokaryotes. This fast-acting poison can arise from diverse sources, but mechanisms by which bacteria sense it are poorly understood. We investigated the regulatory response to cyanide in the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which produces cyanide as a virulence factor. Although P. aeruginosa has the capacity to produce a cyanide-resistant oxidase, it relies primarily on heme-copper oxidases and even makes additional heme-copper oxidase proteins specifically under cyanide-producing conditions. We found that the protein MpaR controls expression of cyanide-inducible genes in P. aeruginosa and elucidated the molecular details of this regulation. MpaR contains a DNA-binding domain and a domain predicted to bind pyridoxal phosphate (vitamin B6), a compound that is known to react spontaneously with cyanide. These observations provide insight into the understudied phenomenon of cyanide-dependent regulation of gene expression in bacteria.
Keywords: Pseudomonas aeruginosa; biofilms; cyanide; terminal oxidase; transcriptional regulation.