The function of multiple Pribnow Box on the aerobic-anaerobic switch control of aeg-46.5 gene expression

The gene aeg-46.5, which is expressed under anaerobic condition, has putative triple -10 regions and four transcription start sites. The mRNA transcription level and its start point change depending on the aerobic/anaerobic growth condition. RNA polymerase and its regulatory proteins must choose which of three -10 region to use. The putative triple 10 region was mutated to make only one of them function with consensus -10 region sequence (TATAAT) and the other two as non-functional region. The results show that the second and third -10 regions are used for the aerobic/anaerobic expression. The third -10 region is responsible for the high aerobic to anaerobic switch ratio. This suggests that only the last two of the putative triple -10 region have functions on aeg-46.5 gene expression switch control. The phenotype of the mutated promoter was tested in the wild type cell and narL^- cell. The results indicate that the control by NarL is independent from the selection of -10 region. The expression patterns on multi-copy plasmids and on single-copy chromosome were compared. These results show that the aerobic/anaerobic switch control of aeg-46.5 is through the choice of -10 region. The mechanism of choosing different -10 region remains to be seen.