Identification and molecular genetic characterization of a sensor kinase responsible for coordinately regulating light harvesting and reaction center gene expression in response to anaerobiosis.

Our laboratory recently demonstrated that anaerobic induction of light harvesting and reaction center structural gene expression involved a trans-acting factor, RegA, which exhibits sequence similarity to the class of prokaryotic sensory transduction proteins known as response regulators (M. W. Sganga and C. E. Bauer, Cell 68:945-954, 1992). In this study, we performed a screen for additional genes involved in inducing anaerobic expression of light harvesting and reaction center structural genes. This search resulted in the isolation of four strains that were shown by complementation and marker rescue analysis to harbor mutations allelic to the originally described regA mutation and one strain with a mutation found to be linked but nonallelic to regA. Sequence analysis indicated that this additional gene, regB, codes for a polypeptide that exhibits sequence similarity to the prokaryotic family of histidine sensor kinases. Analysis of photosynthesis gene expression in regB mutants indicates that the disruption of regB results in a phenotype that is very similar to that described for regA mutants, namely, a failure to trans activate anaerobic expression of the puf, puh, and puc operons. In analogy to other prokaryotic sensory transduction systems, we propose that RegB functions as a membrane-spanning sensor kinase that controls the anaerobic phosphorylation state of RegA, which in turn controls the induction of light harvesting and reaction center structural genes.