S. coelicolor AtrA regulon

Soil bacteria are renowned as a rich source of lead compounds for drug development. A major factor limiting the discovery of bioactive compounds is elicitation of their production under laboratory conditions, which are deficient in reproducing the complexity of the natural environment and consequently the required signal(s) to stimulate expression. Systems that transduce environmental signals are numerous in soil-dwelling bacteria, but remarkably their influence on the production of bioactive compounds is largely uncharacterised. AtrA, a member of TetR family of one-component signal transducers, has sustained significant interest since being described as activating a notable model, the production of actinorhodin by Streptomyces coelicolor. The Streptomyces genus has been a particularly valuable source of clinically important antibiotics and other chemotherapeutics. Using a combination of ChIP-sequencing, RNA sequencing and bioinformatics, we describe herein for the first time the regulatory network for S. coelicolor AtrA.