BioProject

Sinorhizobium meliloti lives as a soil saprophyte, and engages in a nitrogen fixing symbiosis with plant roots. More...

Sinorhizobium meliloti lives as a soil saprophyte, and engages in a nitrogen fixing symbiosis with plant roots. To succeed in such diverse environments, the bacteria must continually adjust gene expression. Transcriptional plasticity in eubacteria is often mediated by alternative sigma factors interacting with core RNA polymerase. The S. meliloti genome encodes 14 of these alternative sigmas, including 11 extracytoplasmic function (ECF) sigmas. We used custom Affymetrix Symbiosis Chips to characterize the global transcriptional response of S. meliloti overexpressing the ECF sigma factor, RpoE2. Our work identifies over 200 genes whose expression is dependent on RpoE2. Overall design: The gene expression profile of Sinorhizobium meliloti strain CL150 carrying the rpoE2 gene on a plasmid, where it was expressed from a melibiose-inducible promoter (the S. meliloti PmelA promoter), was compared to the gene expression profile of CL150 carrying the corresponding empty vector (pCAP11). CL150 is an Rm1021 strain that has been corrected for two point mutations: it is wild type for ecfR1 and pstC. Less...