Symmetry region at beginning of transcript inhibits expression of Escherichia coli aeg-46.5 operon

The aeg-46.5 operon of Escherichia coli is induced by nitrate and anaerobic conditions. Positive regulators Fnr and NarP, and a negative regulator NarL control the expression of the aeg-46.5. It has two symmetry regions [6], one of which is located between +37 and +56 bp from the 5'end of the anaerobic transcription initiation site. In this study, mutagenized symmetry regions were transferred from plasmid to chromosome by homologous recombination to evaluate the mutation as a single copy in the fnr, narL, narP, and narL-narP double mutant background. The expressions of the aeg-46.5 operon with these mutations indicated that the control was not through the possible stem-loop structure. Whether there is a protein that mediates this control remains to be seen. The results from the narL-narP double mutant indicated that the anaerobic Fnr induction was independent of NarL repression.