Abstract
Chemosensory systems are highly organized signaling pathways that allow bacteria to adapt to environmental changes. The Frz chemosensory system from M. xanthus possesses two CheW-like proteins, FrzA (the core CheW) and FrzB. We found that FrzB does not interact with FrzE (the cognate CheA) as it lacks the amino acid region responsible for this interaction. FrzB, instead, acts upstream of FrzCD in the regulation of M. xanthus chemotaxis behaviors and activates the Frz pathway by allowing the formation and distribution of multiple chemosensory clusters on the nucleoid. These results, together, show that the lack of the CheA-interacting region in FrzB confers new functions to this small protein.
Publication types
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Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
MeSH terms
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Bacterial Proteins / genetics
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Bacterial Proteins / metabolism
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Cell Movement
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Chemotaxis*
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Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial
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Methyl-Accepting Chemotaxis Proteins / genetics
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Methyl-Accepting Chemotaxis Proteins / metabolism*
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Myxococcus xanthus / genetics
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Myxococcus xanthus / physiology*
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Operon
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Phenotype
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Signal Transduction
Substances
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Bacterial Proteins
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FrzCD protein, Myxococcus xanthus
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Methyl-Accepting Chemotaxis Proteins
Grants and funding
Research on chemotaxis in our laboratory is funded by the Agence National de la Recherche Jeune Chercheur-Jeune Chercheuse (ANR-14-CE11-0023-01) to EMFM (
http://www.agence-nationale-recherche.fr/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.