Hierarchical transcriptional regulation of quorum sensing genes in Vibrio harveyi

Quorum sensing controls hundreds of genes in vibrios required for cell density-specific behaviors, including bioluminescence, biofilm formation, competence, secretion, and motility. The central regulator in the quorum sensing pathway in vibrios is LuxR/HapR, which directly regulates >100 genes in the 625-gene regulon of Vibrio harveyi. Among these directly regulated genes are 15 transcription factors, which we predicted would comprise the second tier in the hierarchy of the quorum sensing regulon. To better study the mechanism of regulation of the quorum sensing network, we mapped all transcriptional start sites in V. harveyi using dRNA-seq. From these data, we determined the relative position of LuxR binding sites in the promoters of genes directly regulated by LuxR. We confirmed that LuxR directly binds to the promoters of the genes encoding transcription factors and quantified the extent of LuxR activation or repression of transcript levels. Finally, we determined the individual regulons for a subset of transcription factors that have not been previously studied. For regulators such as LysR- or AsnC/Lrp-type transcription factors, the regulons contained >100 genes that contained both unique and overlapping genes with the LuxR regulon. These data support a model in which LuxR directly regulates other transcription factors, which act to further alter the second tier of the gene expression cascade producing cell density behaviors in V. harveyi. RNA-seq of cultures grown to OD600=1.0