An Unusual Phage Repressor Encoded by Mycobacteriophage BPs

PLoS One. 2015 Sep 2;10(9):e0137187. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0137187. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Temperate bacteriophages express transcription repressors that maintain lysogeny by down-regulating lytic promoters and confer superinfection immunity. Repressor regulation is critical to the outcome of infection-lysogenic or lytic growth-as well as prophage induction into lytic replication. Mycobacteriophage BPs and its relatives use an unusual integration-dependent immunity system in which the phage attachment site (attP) is located within the repressor gene (33) such that site-specific integration leads to synthesis of a prophage-encoded product (gp33103) that is 33 residues shorter at its C-terminus than the virally-encoded protein (gp33136). However, the shorter form of the repressor (gp33103) is stable and active in repression of the early lytic promoter PR, whereas the longer virally-encoded form (gp33136) is inactive due to targeted degradation via a C-terminal ssrA-like tag. We show here that both forms of the repressor bind similarly to the 33-34 intergenic regulatory region, and that BPs gp33103 is a tetramer in solution. The BPs gp33103 repressor binds to five regulatory regions spanning the BPs genome, and regulates four promoters including the early lytic promoter, PR. BPs gp33103 has a complex pattern of DNA recognition in which a full operator binding site contains two half sites separated by a variable spacer, and BPs gp33103 induces a DNA bend at the full operator site but not a half site. The operator site structure is unusual in that one half site corresponds to a 12 bp palindrome identified previously, but the other half site is a highly variable variant of the palindrome.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Base Sequence
  • DNA Footprinting
  • DNA, Viral / chemistry
  • DNA, Viral / genetics
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Mycobacteriophages / genetics*
  • Mycobacteriophages / immunology
  • Promoter Regions, Genetic
  • Protein Binding
  • Repressor Proteins / genetics*
  • Viral Proteins / chemistry
  • Viral Proteins / genetics

Substances

  • DNA, Viral
  • Repressor Proteins
  • Viral Proteins