Abstract
Amycolatopsis, genus of a rare actinomycete, produces many clinically important antibiotics, such as rifamycin and vancomycin. Although GlnR of Amycolatopsis mediterranei is a direct activator of the glnA gene expression, the production of GlnR does not linearly correlate with the expression of glnA under different nitrogen conditions. Moreover, A. mediterranei GlnR apparently inhibits rifamycin biosynthesis in the absence of nitrate but is indispensable for the nitrate-stimulating effect for its production, which leads to the hyper-production of rifamycin. When glnR of A. mediterranei was introduced into its phylogenetically related organism, Streptomyces coelicolor, we found that GlnR widely participated in the host strain’s secondary metabolism, resemblance to the phenotypes of a unique S. coelicolorglnR mutant, FS2. In contrast, absence or increment in copy number of the native S. coelicolor glnR did not result in a detectable pleiotrophic effect. We thus suggest that GlnR is a global regulator with a dual functional impact upon nitrogen metabolism and related antibiotics production.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Dr Lewis V. Wray Jr. for providing strains and plasmids. The authors would like to thank Dr. Michael Otto for his help in manuscript preparation. This work was supported by a grant from the Natural Science Foundation of P. R. China (# 30125002).
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Yu, H., Yao, Y., Liu, Y. et al. A complex role of Amycolatopsis mediterranei GlnR in nitrogen metabolism and related antibiotics production. Arch Microbiol 188, 89–96 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0228-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0228-7