title: The putrescine Importer PuuP of Escherichia coli K-12.
abstract: The Puu pathway is a putrescine utilization pathway involving gamma-glutamyl intermediates. The genes encoding the enzymes of the Puu pathway form a gene cluster, the puu gene cluster, and puuP is one of the genes in this cluster. In Escherichia coli, three putrescine importers, PotFGHI, PotABCD, and PotE, were discovered in the 1990s and have been studied; however, PuuP had not been discovered previously. This paper shows that PuuP is a novel putrescine importer whose kinetic parameters are equivalent to those of the polyamine importers discovered previously. A puuP(+) strain absorbed up to 5 mM putrescine from the medium, but a DeltapuuP strain did not. E. coli strain MA261 has been used in previous studies of polyamine transporters, but PuuP had not been identified previously. It was revealed that the puuP gene of MA261 was inactivated by a point mutation. When E. coli was grown on minimal medium supplemented with putrescine as the sole carbon or nitrogen source, only PuuP among the polyamine importers was required. puuP was expressed strongly when putrescine was added to the medium or when the puuR gene, which encodes a putative repressor, was deleted. When E. coli was grown in M9-tryptone medium, PuuP was expressed mainly in the exponential growth phase, and PotFGHI was expressed independently of the growth phase.
authors.affiliation: Division of Applied Biology, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Goshokaido-cho, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Shin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kurihara
authors.forename: Yuichi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tsuboi
authors.forename: Shinpei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Oda
authors.forename: Hyeon Guk
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Hidehiko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kumagai
authors.forename: Hideyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Suzuki
mesh_terms: D003470:Culture Media / Q000737:chemistry; D048168:Escherichia coli K12 / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D017353:Gene Deletion; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D007700:Kinetics; D026901:Membrane Transport Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D011700:Putrescine / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D003470:Culture Media; D029968:Escherichia coli Proteins; D026901:Membrane Transport Proteins; C540054:PuuP protein, E coli; D011700:Putrescine