Borrelia burgdorferi EbfC defines a newly-identified, widespread family of bacterial DNA-binding proteins.
The Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi, encodes a novel type of DNA-binding protein named EbfC. Orthologs of EbfC are encoded by a wide range of bacterial species, so characterization of the borrelial protein has implications that span the eubacterial kingdom. The present work defines the DNA sequence required for high-affinity binding by EbfC to be the 4 bp broken palindrome GTnAC, where 'n' can be any nucleotide. Two high-affinity EbfC-binding sites are located immediately 5' of B. burgdorferi erp transcriptional promoters, and binding of EbfC was found to alter the conformation of erp promoter DNA. Consensus EbfC-binding sites are abundantly distributed throughout the B. burgdorferi genome, occurring approximately once every 1 kb. These and other features of EbfC suggest that this small protein and its orthologs may represent a distinctive type of bacterial nucleoid-associated protein. EbfC was shown to bind DNA as a homodimer, and site-directed mutagenesis studies indicated that EbfC and its orthologs appear to bind DNA via a novel alpha-helical 'tweezer'-like structure.
Riley
Sean P
SP
Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY 40536-0298, USA.
Bykowski
Tomasz
T
Cooley
Anne E
AE
Burns
Logan H
LH
Babb
Kelly
K
Brissette
Catherine A
CA
Bowman
Amy
A
Rotondi
Matthew
M
Miller
M Clarke
MC
DeMoll
Edward
E
Lim
Kap
K
Fried
Michael G
MG
Stevenson
Brian
B
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000145:classification / Q000378:metabolism; D001483:Base Sequence; D001665:Binding Sites; D025065:Borrelia burgdorferi / Q000235:genetics*; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000145:classification / Q000378:metabolism; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D009875:Operator Regions, Genetic; D011485:Protein Binding; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary
D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins