Escherichia coli Lrp (Leucine-Responsive Regulatory Protein) Does Not Directly Regulate Expression of the leu Operon Promoter

Studies by R. Lin et al. (J. Bacteriol. 174:1948–1955, 1992) suggested that the Escherichia coli leu operon might be a member of the Lrp regulon. Their results were obtained with a leucine auxotroph; in leucine prototrophs grown in a medium lacking leucine, there was little difference in leu operon expression between lrp(+) and lrp strains. Furthermore, when leuP-lacZ transcriptional fusions that lacked the leu attenuator were used, expression from the leu promoter varied less than twofold between lrp(+) and lrp strains, irrespective of whether or not excess leucine was added to the medium. The simplest explanation of the observations of Lin et al. is that the known elevated leucine transport capacity of lrp strains (S. A. Haney et al., J. Bacteriol. 174:108–115, 1992) leads to very high intracellular levels of leucine for strains grown with leucine, resulting in the superattenuation of leu operon expression.