title: Transcriptional regulators à la carte: engineering new effector specificities in bacterial regulatory proteins.
abstract: For many regulators of bacterial biodegradation pathways, small molecule/effector binding is the signal for triggering transcriptional activation. Thus, regulation results from a cross-talk between chemicals sensed by transcriptional factors and operon expression status. These features can be utilised in the construction of biosensors for a wide range of target compounds as, in principle, any regulatory protein whose activity is modulated by binding to a small molecule can have its effector/inducer profile artificially altered. The cognate specificities of a number of regulatory proteins have been modified as an astute approach to developing, among others, bacterial biosensors for environmentally relevant compounds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbial Biotechnology, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología-CSIC, Madrid 28049, Spain. tgalvao@cnb.uam.es
authors.forename: Teca Calcagno
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Galvão
authors.forename: Víctor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: de Lorenzo
mesh_terms: D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D001673:Biodegradation, Environmental; D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D005818:Genetic Engineering; D009154:Mutation; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D014157:Transcription Factors