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Unravelling the role of the ToxR-like transcriptional regulator WmpR in the marine antifouling bacterium Pseudoalteromonas tunicata

¹ School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, University of New South Wales, Randwick, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
² Centre for Marine Biofouling and Bio-Innovation, University of New South Wales, Randwick, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
³ Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
⁴ Marine Biology Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093-0202, USA

Correspondence
Staffan Kjelleberg
s.kjelleberg{at}unsw.edu.au

The dark-green-pigmented marine bacterium Pseudoalteromonas tunicata produces several target-specific compounds that act against a range of common fouling organisms, including bacteria, fungi, protozoa, invertebrate larvae and algal spores. The ToxR-like regulator WmpR has previously been shown to regulate expression of bioactive compounds, type IV pili and biofilm formation phenotypes which all appear at the onset of stationary phase. In this study a comparison of survival under starvation or stress between the wild-type P. tunicata strain and a wmpR mutant (D2W2) does not suggest a role for WmpR in regulating starvation- and stress-resistant phenotypes such as those that may be required in stationary phase. Both proteomic [2-dimensional PAGE (2D-PAGE)] and transcriptomic (RNA arbitrarily primed PCR) studies were used to discover members of the WmpR regulon. 2D-PAGE identified 11 proteins that were differentially expressed by WmpR. Peptide sequence data were obtained for six of these proteins and identified using the draft P. tunicata genome as being involved in protein synthesis, amino acid transamination and ubiquinone biosynthesis, as well as hypothetical proteins. The transcriptomic analysis identified three genes significantly up-regulated by WmpR, including a TonB-dependent outer-membrane protein, a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase and a hypothetical protein. Under iron-limitation the wild-type showed greater survival than D2W2, indicating the importance of WmpR under these conditions. Results from these studies show that WmpR controls the expression of genes encoding proteins involved in iron acquisition and uptake, amino acid metabolism and ubiquinone biosynthesis in addition to a number of proteins with as yet unknown functions.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the sequences reported in this paper are DQ008597–DQ008599 and DQ310001–DQ310005.

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