Transcriptional regulators à la carte: engineering new effector specificities in bacterial regulatory proteins.
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.
Galvão
Teca Calcagno
TC
Department of Microbial Biotechnology, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología-CSIC, Madrid 28049, Spain. tgalvao@cnb.uam.es
de Lorenzo
Víctor
V
D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D001673:Biodegradation, Environmental; D015374:Biosensing Techniques; D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D005818:Genetic Engineering; D009154:Mutation; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000235:genetics*
D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D004785:Environmental Pollutants; D014157:Transcription Factors