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Microbiology 152 (2006), 3035-3048; DOI  10.1099/mic.0.29137-0
© 2006 Society for General Microbiology

Comparative analysis of two-component signal transduction systems of Bacillus cereus, Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus anthracis

Mark de Been1,2,3, Christof Francke1,2, Roy Moezelaar1,4, Tjakko Abee1,3 and Roland J. Siezen1,2,5

1 Wageningen Centre for Food Sciences (WCFS), Wageningen, The Netherlands
2 Centre for Molecular and Biomolecular Informatics (CMBI), Radboud University, PO Box 9101, 6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3 Laboratory of Food Microbiology, Wageningen University and Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands
4 Food Technology Centre, Wageningen University and Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands
5 NIZO food research BV, Ede, The Netherlands

Correspondence
Mark de Been
mdebeen{at}cmbi.ru.nl

Members of the Bacillus cereus group are ubiquitously present in the environment and can adapt to a wide range of environmental fluctuations. In bacteria, these adaptive responses are generally mediated by two-component signal transduction systems (TCSs), which consist of a histidine kinase (HK) and its cognate response regulator (RR). With the use of in silico techniques, a complete set of HKs and RRs was recovered from eight completely sequenced B. cereus group genomes. By applying a bidirectional best-hits method combined with gene neighbourhood analysis, a footprint of these proteins was made. Around 40 HK-RR gene pairs were detected in each member of the B. cereus group. In addition, each member contained many HK and RR genes not encoded in pairs (‘orphans’). Classification of HKs and RRs based on their enzymic domains together with the analysis of two neighbour-joining trees of these domains revealed putative interaction partners for most of the ‘orphans’. Putative biological functions, including involvement in virulence and host–microbe interactions, were predicted for the B. cereus group HKs and RRs by comparing them with those of B. subtilis and other micro-organisms. Remarkably, B. anthracis appeared to lack specific HKs and RRs and was found to contain many truncated, putatively non-functional, HK and RR genes. It is hypothesized that specialization of B. anthracis as a pathogen could have reduced the range of environmental stimuli to which it is exposed. This may have rendered some of its TCSs obsolete, ultimately resulting in the deletion of some HK and RR genes.

Abbreviations: HK, histidine kinase; HMM, hidden Markov model; NJ, neighbour-joining; RR, response regulator; NCBI, National Center for Biotechnology Information; TCS, two-component signal transduction system

Two supplementary figures and four supplementary tables are available with the online version of this paper.






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