The TroR transcription factor regulates iron homeostasis in the halophilic archaeon Haloferax volcanii [RNA-Seq]

Iron is essential for almost all organisms, but can be toxic in excess. Cells use regulatory mechanisms to control the iron uptake, iron utilization and iron release mechanisms to ensure the availability of enough iron to be used for biological processess but minimizing the oxidative stress caused by the oxidation of free molecules of iron. In this paper we show that TroR is a transcription factor from the conserved family of proteins DtxR that works as the major regulator of iron homeostasis in the halophilic archaeon Haloferax volcanii. Overall design: Using RNA seq, we compared the trancriptome of cells from parental strain versus the troR knockout strain, growing in minimal media containing iron in excess to understand if the TF TroR was involved in those cellular mechanims that determine iron homeostasis. RNA was checked for quality, and 300-500 micrograms of total RNA were depleted using RIBOZERO to remove rRNA.Libraries were constructed using ~50 ng of mRNA using the Kapa Stranded RNA-Seq Library Preparation Kit (KAPA Biosystems, Illumina).