Fe-S clusters are prosthetic groups which are necessary for the enzymatic activity of proteins involved in a plethora of metabolic pathways, such as respiration, DNA repair or transcriptional regulation. In Escherichia coli, there are five genes encoding for transcriptional regulators containing an Fe-S cluster: FNR, NsrR, IscR, SoxR and YeiL. While the functions of the first four are known, there is still little information about the function or the regulation of YeiL. Previous data obtained in the laboratory suggest that YeiL may regulate several targets, such as the hcp operon as well as several genes involved in the metabolism of aldaric acids, but the conditions of YeiL expression are still mostly unknown. Recently, it was shown that the expression of the hcp operon was repressed by YeiL in absence of OxyR and in presence of NONOate, which induces a nitrosative stress. Therefore, we hypothesized that YeiL may exert its activity in presence of nitrosative stress. One way to induce such conditions consists in growing the cells anaerobically in presence of nitrate. Thus, we cultivated four strains (WT, DyeiL, DoxyR and DyeiLDoxyR) under these conditions and we are planning to make a transcriptomic analysis of these four strains in order to uncover the regulon of YeiL. By doing that, we hope to obtain a better understanding of the role of YeiL in the metabolism of E. coli.
Related team publications: