title: Temporal regulation of viral transcription during development of Thermus thermophilus bacteriophage phiYS40.
abstract: Regulation of gene expression of lytic bacteriophage varphiYS40 that infects the thermophilic bacterium Thermus thermophilus was investigated and three temporal classes of phage genes, early, middle, and late, were revealed. varphiYS40 does not encode a (RNAP) and must rely on host RNAP for transcription of its genes. Bioinformatic analysis using a model of Thermus promoters predicted 43 putative sigma(A)-dependent -10/-35 class phage promoters. A randomly chosen subset of those promoters was shown to be functional in vivo and in vitro and to belong to the early temporal class. Macroarray analysis, primer extension, and bioinformatic predictions identified 36 viral middle and late promoters. These promoters have a single common consensus element, which resembles host sigma(A) RNAP holoenzyme -10 promoter consensus element sequence. The mechanism responsible for the temporal control of the three classes of promoters remains unknown, since host sigma(A) RNAP holoenzyme purified from either infected or uninfected cells efficiently transcribed all varphiYS40 promoters in vitro. Interestingly, our data showed that during infection, there is a significant increase and decrease of transcript amounts of host translation initiation factors IF2 and IF3, respectively. This finding, together with the fact that most middle and late varphiYS40 transcripts were found to be leaderless, suggests that the shift to late viral gene expression may also occur at the level of mRNA translation.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow 123182, Russia.
authors.forename: Anastasiya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sevostyanova
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Djordjevic
authors.forename: Konstantin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kuznedelov
authors.forename: Tatyana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Naryshkina
authors.forename: Mikhail S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Gelfand
authors.forename: Konstantin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Severinov
authors.forename: Leonid
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Minakhin
mesh_terms: D001435:Bacteriophages / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D015967:Gene Expression Regulation, Viral; D016679:Genome, Viral; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012808:Sigma Factor / Q000235:genetics; D016963:Thermus thermophilus / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000821:virology*; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D012808:Sigma Factor