Summary:
The "Rhamnose regulator," RhaS, is a transcription factor involved in L-rhamnose degradation and transport [3, 4, 10]. RhaS alone is able to activate transcription of rha operons, but in the presence of CRP, transcription increases. On the other hand, CRP alone is unable to activate transcription of rha operons in the absence of RhaS. Therefore, these two regulators bind cooperatively to fully activate the operons related with transport and degradation of L-rhamnose [4, 5, 10, 12]. Additionally, synthesis of rha operons is induced when E. coli is grown on L-rhamnose in the absence of glucose and when cellular cyclic AMP levels are high [12].
RhaS is part of the unusual rhaSR operon that encodes two transcriptional regulators, RhaS and RhaR (30% identical), both members of the AraC/XylS family of transcriptional regulators [2, 13]. Apparently, expression of operons involved in transport and degradation of L-rhamnose first requires expression of RhaR, which induces transcription of the rhaSR operon.
In this way, RhaS activates transcription of L-rhamnose gene clusters.
This transcription factor is composed of two domains, a C-terminal domain that contains two potential helix-turn-helix DNA-binding motifs and an N-terminal domain involved in L-rhamnose binding and dimerization of the protein
[1, 7, 8]. Mutational studies carried out to define interactions between RhaS and σ
70 suggest the existence of two interaction regions in both. The contact regions through which both proteins interact are represented by two amino acid residues in the C-terminal domains of RhaS (D241 and D250) and σ
70 (R599 and K593)
[7, 14].
In the presence of L-rhamnose, RhaS binds in tandem to repeat sequences upstream of the
rhaAp and
rhaTp intergenic regions. The binding site for RhaS overlaps the -35 region of both
rhaBp and
rhaTp promoters in 4 bp. The binding targets for RhaS consist of 17-nucleotide-long sequences that possess conserved motifs; each monomer binds to one of these conserved sequences
[5, 7]. It seems the binding sites of RhaS are on a different face of the DNA relative to the
rhaBAD operon
[3, 8].
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