Thermoregulation of Shigella and Escherichia coli EIEC pathogenicity. A temperature‐dependent structural transition of DNA modulates accessibility of virF promoter to transcriptional repressor H‐NS

The expression of plasmid‐borne virF of Shigella encoding a transcriptional regulator of the AraC family, is required to initiate a cascade of events resulting in activation of several operons encoding invasion functions. H‐NS, one of the main nucleoid‐associated proteins, controls the temperature‐dependent expression of the virulence genes by repressing the in vivo transcription of virF only below a critical temperature (∼32°C). This temperature‐dependent transcriptional regulation has been reproduced in vitro and the targets of H‐NS on the virF promoter were identified as two sites centred around −250 and −1 separated by an intrinsic DNA curvature. H‐NS bound cooperatively to these two sites below 32°C, but not at 37°C. DNA supercoiling within the virF promoter region did not influence H‐NS binding but was necessary for the H‐NS‐mediated transcriptional repression. Electrophoretic analysis between 4 and 60°C showed that the virF promoter fragment, comprising the two H‐NS sites, undergoes a specific and temperature‐dependent conformational transition at ∼32°C. Our results suggest that this modification of the DNA target may modulate a cooperative interaction between H‐NS molecules bound at two distant sites in the virF promoter region and thus represents the physical basis for the H‐NS‐dependent thermoregulation of virulence gene expression.

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