Data for: Sigma-B responses of Bacillus subtilis exposed to different environmental stressors and containing different single RsbR proteins or hybrid fusions of RsbRs

Bacteria use a variety of systems to sense stress and mount an appropriate response to assure fitness and survival. Bacillus subtilis uses stressosomes—cytoplasmic multiprotein complexes—to sense environmental stressors and enact the general stress response by activating the alternative sigma factor σB. Each stressosome includes 40 RsbR proteins, representing four paralogous (RsbRA, RsbRB, RsbRC, and RsbRD) putative stress sensors. Population-level analyses suggested that the RsbR paralogs are largely redundant, while our prior work using microfluidics-coupled fluorescence microscopy uncovered differences among the RsbR paralogs’ σB response profiles with respect to timing and intensity when facing an identical stressor.
We used microfluidics and fluorescence microscopy to address the question of whether the σB responses mediated by each paralog differ in the presence of different environmental stressors: can they distinguish among stressors? Wild-type cells (with all four paralogs) and...