Paradoxical Enhancement of the Activity of a Bacterial Multidrug Transporter Caused by Substitutions of a Conserved Residue

Substitution of threonine or serine for the evolutionary conserved intramembrane proline P(347) of the Bacillus subtilis multidrug transporter Bmr significantly increases the toxin-effluxing activity of Bmr without affecting its abundance in the cell. In cocultivation experiments, we demonstrate that although the mutant T(347) Bmr is advantageous to cells growing in the presence of a toxin, the wild-type P(347) Bmr is advantageous under the conditions of nutritional limitation. This may explain why Bmr has evolved the way it did, that is, with proline at position 347. These observations provide a basis for speculating that the evolution of Bmr has been determined by its presently unidentified natural function rather than by its ability to expel diverse toxins from the cell.