%0 Journal Article
%T GntR family of regulators in Mycobacterium smegmatis: a sequence and structure based characterization
%A Vaibhav Vindal
%A Katta Suma
%A Akash Ranjan
%J BMC Genomics
%D 2007
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1471-2164-8-289
%X The sequence analysis of M. smegmatis putative GntRs has revealed that FadR, HutC, MocR and the YtrA-like regulators are encoded by 45, 8, 8 and 1 genes respectively. Further out of 45 FadR-like regulators, 19 were classified into the FadR group and 26 into the VanR group. All these proteins showed similar secondary structural elements specific to their respective subfamilies except MSMEG_3959, which showed additional secondary structural elements. Using the reciprocal BLAST searches, we further identified the orthologs of these regulators in Bacillus subtilis and other mycobacteria. Since the expression of many regulators is auto-regulatory, we have identified potential operator sites for a number of these GntR regulators by analyzing the upstream sequences.This study helps in extending the annotation of M. smegmatis GntR proteins. It identifies the GntR regulators of M. smegmatis that could serve as a model for studying orthologous regulators from virulent as well as other saprophytic mycobacteria. This study also sheds some light on the nucleotide preferences in the target-motifs of GntRs thus providing important leads for initiating the experimental characterization of these proteins, construction of the gene regulatory network for these regulators and an understanding of the influence of these proteins on the physiology of the mycobacteria.Being a fast growing, non-pathogenic mycobacteria, Mycobacterium smegmatis has been widely used as a model organism to study the biology of other virulent and extremely slow growing species like M. tuberculosis. The genome of M. smegmatis, as listed at the TIGR site, contains a large number of putative GntR-like regulators. These regulators play an important role in the cellular physiology. Many such regulators are involved in regulation of gene expression in response to various oxidized substrates related to either amino acid metabolism or at the branch points of various other metabolic pathways.The GntR family of bacterial
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/289