Protein phosphorylation in bacterial signal transduction.
BACKGROUND
Protein phosphorylation has emerged as one of the major post translational modifications in bacteria, involved in regulating a myriad of physiological processes. In a complex and dynamic system such as the bacterial cell, connectivity of its components accounts for a number of emergent properties. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Systems Biology of Microorganisms.


METHODS
This review focuses on the implications of bacterial protein phosphorylation in cell signaling and regulation and highlights the connections and cross talk between various signaling pathways: bacterial two-component systems and serine/threonine kinases, but also the interference between phosphorylation and other post-translational modifications (methylation and acetylation).


CONCLUSIONS
Recent technical developments in high accuracy mass spectrometry have profoundly transformed proteomics, and today exhaustive site-specific phosphoproteomes are available for a number of bacterial species. Nevertheless, prediction of phosphorylation sites remains the main guide for many researchers, so we discuss the characteristics, limits and advantages of available phosphorylation predictors.


CONCLUSIONS
The advent of quantitative phosphoproteomics has brought the field on the doorstep of systems biology, but a number of challenges remain before the bacterial phosphorylation networks can be efficiently modeled and their physiological role understood. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Systems Biology of Microorganisms.
Micalis, AgroParisTech-INRA UMR 1319, Jouy en Josas, France.
Ahasanul
A
Kobir
Lei
L
Shi
Ana
A
Boskovic
Christophe
C
Grangeasse
Damjan
D
Franjevic
Ivan
I
Mijakovic
D001419:Bacteria / Q000378:metabolism*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D010766:Phosphorylation; D011494:Protein Kinases / Q000378:metabolism; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology
D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D011494:Protein Kinases