Characterization of five novel Pseudomonas aeruginosa cell-surface signaling systems

Cell-surface signaling is a sophisticated regulatory mechanism used by gram-negative bacteria to sense signals from outside the cell and transmit them into the cytoplasm. This regulatory system consists of an outer membrane-localized TonB-dependent receptor (TonB-dependent transducer), a cytoplasmic membrane-localized anti-sigma factor and an extracytoplasmic function (ECF) sigma factor. By microarray analysis we have identified the regulons of four novel P. aeruginosa signaling systems. For that, the ECF sigmas PA0149, PA2050, PA2093 and PA4896 have been overexpressed in P. aeruginosa and their target gene candidates have been identified using DNA microarray. Keywords: Overexpression of ECF sigma factors Five different samples are analyzed namely P. aeruginosa (pMMB67EH) (control/reference sample), P. aeruginosa (pMMB-PA4896) (overexpressing the PA4896 ECF sigma factor), P. aeruginosa (pMMB-PA0149) (overexpressing the PA0149 ECF sigma factor), P. aeruginosa (pMMB-PA2050) (overexpressing the PA2050 ECF sigma factor), and P. aeruginosa (pMMB-PA2093) (overexpressing the PA2093 ECF sigma factor). Two different replicates are included for the three first samples and one for the two last samples.