Abstract
Bacteria possess many kinases that catalyze phosphorylation of proteins on diverse amino acids including arginine, cysteine, histidine, aspartate, serine, threonine, and tyrosine. These protein kinases regulate different physiological processes in response to environmental modifications. For example, in response to nutritional stresses, the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis can differentiate into an endospore; the initiation of sporulation is controlled by the master regulator Spo0A, which is activated by phosphorylation. Spo0A phosphorylation is carried out by a multi-component phosphorelay system. These phosphorylation events on histidine and aspartate residues are labile, highly dynamic and permit a temporal control of the sporulation initiation decision. More recently, another kind of phosphorylation, more stable yet still dynamic, on serine or threonine residues, was proposed to play a role in spore maintenance and spore revival. Kinases that perform these phosphorylation events mainly belong to the Hanks family and could regulate spore dormancy and spore germination. The aim of this mini review is to focus on the regulation of sporulation in B. subtilis by these serine and threonine phosphorylation events and the kinases catalyzing them.
Highlights
Many Gram-positive bacteria form endospores in response to stress or nutrient limitation (Stragier and Losick, 1996; Higgins and Dworkin, 2012)
Similarities between the bacterial Ser/Thr protein kinases (STPKs) YabT and the eukaryotic STPKs C-Abl and Mec1 have been found: all these kinases are activated by DNA and phosphorylate proteins involved in DNA damage repair mechanisms (Bidnenko et al, 2013)
It is widely accepted that regulatory Ser/Thr phosphorylation is as present in prokaryotes as in eukaryotes and that enzymes responsible for these modifications are mainly eukaryotic-like Ser/Thr kinases
Summary
Many Gram-positive bacteria form endospores in response to stress or nutrient limitation (Stragier and Losick, 1996; Higgins and Dworkin, 2012). The expression of two genes encoding the STPKs PrkA and YabT increases strongly during sporulation under the control of the spore-specific sigma factors, σE and σF, respectively (Figure 2). Likely that YabT regulates RecA activity in the forespore in order to allow DNA damage repair before nucleoid compaction in the spore (Sciochetti et al, 2001).
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