Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbial Physiology and Metabolism
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1528825

Toxin-antitoxin genes are differentially expressed in Escherichia coli relA and spoT mutans cultured under nitrogen, fatty acid, or carbon starvation conditions

Provisionally accepted
Monika Maciąg-Dorszyńska Monika Maciąg-Dorszyńska 1Paweł Olszewski Paweł Olszewski 2Monika Karczewska Monika Karczewska 1Lidia Krystyna Boss Lidia Krystyna Boss 1*
  • 1 University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland
  • 2 Uppsala University, Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The stringent response is one of the fundamental mechanisms that control and modulate bacterial adaptation to stress conditions, such as nutrient limitation. The accumulation of stringent response effectors, (p)ppGpp, causes differential expression of approximately 500 genes, including genes of bacterial endogenous toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems. However, the exact link between (p)ppGpp and toxin-antitoxin systems' activation, as well as toxin-antitoxin role in stress adaptation remains disputed. In this study, we performed a complex analysis of changes in the toxin-antitoxin operons' transcription in response to nitrogen, fatty acid, or carbon starvation, in bacteria with different abilities of (p)ppGpp accumulation. Although we observed that in some cases (p)ppGpp accumulation appears to be crucial for transcriptional activation of TA genes (e.g., ghoST, ryeA), our data indicates that the general pattern of chromosomally encoded TA gene expression in E. coli differs depending on the nutrient distribution in the environment, regardless of the alarmone accumulation.

    Keywords: Toxin-antitoxin, relA, spoT203, ppGpp, RNA-Seq, HokB, MqsRA, Ghost

    Received: 19 Nov 2024; Accepted: 23 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Maciąg-Dorszyńska, Olszewski, Karczewska and Boss. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Lidia Krystyna Boss, University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.