CyAbrB2 contributes to the transcriptional regulation of low CO2 acclimation in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803

Acclimation to low CO2 conditions in cyanobacteria involves the coordinated regulation of genes mainly encoding components of the carbon concentration mechanism (CCM). Making use of several independent microarray datasets a core set of CO2-regulated genes was defined for the model strain Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. On the transcriptional level, the CCM is mainly regulated by the well-characterized transcriptional regulators NdhR and CmpR, whereas the role of an additional regulatory protein, namely cyAbrB2 belonging to the widely distributed AbrB regulator family that was originally characterized in the genus Bacillus, is less defined. Here we present results of transcript profiling of the wild type and a ΔcyabrB2 mutant of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 after shifts from high CO2 (5% in air, HC) to low CO2 (0.04%, LC). Evaluation of the transcriptomic data revealed that cyAbrB2 is involved in the regulation of several CCM-related genes such as sbtA/B, ndhF3/ndhD3/cupA and cmpABCD under LC conditions, but apparently acts supplementary to the main regulators. Under HC conditions, cyAbrB2 deletion changes the expression of photosystem II subunits, light-harvesting components, and Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle enzymes. We analyzed gene expression in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 WT as well as a ΔcyabrB2 mutant at HC (5% CO2) and 24h after shift to LC (air). For the WT six biological replicates were analyzed for each sampling point; the ∆cyAbrb2 mutant was analyzed in duplicates.