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Lon protease promotes survival of Escherichia coli during anaerobic glucose starvation

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Abstract

In Escherichia coli, Lon is an ATP-dependent protease which degrades misfolded proteins and certain rapidly-degraded regulatory proteins. Given that oxidatively damaged proteins are generally degraded rather than repaired, we anticipated that Lon deficient cells would exhibit decreased viability during aerobic, but not anaerobic, carbon starvation. We found that the opposite actually occurs. Wild-type and Lon deficient cells survived equally well under aerobic conditions, but Lon deficient cells died more rapidly than the wild-type under anaerobiosis. Aerobic induction of the Clp family of ATP-dependent proteases could explain these results, but direct quantitation of Clp protein established that its level was not affected by Lon deficiency and overexpression of Clp did not rescue the cells under anaerobic conditions. We conclude that the Lon protease supports survival during anaerobic carbon starvation by a mechanism which does not depend on Clp.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Michael R. Maurizi for his kind gifts of the E. coli K-12 strains, plasmids, and ClpP antibody and especially for helpful discussions and suggestions. This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH (NHLBI and NIAID).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Biochemistry, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH, Building 50, Room 2351, Bethesda, MD, 20892-8012, USA

    Shen Luo & Rodney L. Levine

  2. Research Technologies Branch, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH, 5640 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD, 20852, USA

    Megan McNeill, Timothy G. Myers & Robert J. Hohman

Authors
  1. Shen Luo
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  2. Megan McNeill
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  3. Timothy G. Myers
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  4. Robert J. Hohman
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  5. Rodney L. Levine
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rodney L. Levine.

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Communicated by Jorge Membrillo-Hernandéz.

Shen Luo and Megan McNeill contributed equally to this research.

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Luo, S., McNeill, M., Myers, T.G. et al. Lon protease promotes survival of Escherichia coli during anaerobic glucose starvation. Arch Microbiol 189, 181–185 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0304-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-007-0304-z

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