Research

In silico identification and experimental validation of PmrAB targets in Salmonella typhimurium by regulatory motif detection

Kathleen Marchal¹ , Sigrid De Keersmaecker², Pieter Monsieurs¹, Nadja van Boxel², Karen Lemmens¹, Gert Thijs¹, Jos Vanderleyden² and Bart De Moor¹

¹  ESAT-SCD, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, 3001 Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium

²  Centre of Microbial and Plant Genetics, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 20, 3001 Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2004, 5:R9doi:10.1186/gb-2004-5-2-r9

Published:	29 January 2004

Subject areas: Microbiology and parasitology, Bioinformatics, Genetics, Genome studies

Abstract

Background

The PmrAB (BasSR) two-component regulatory system is required for Salmonella typhimurium virulence. PmrAB-controlled modifications of the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) layer confer resistance to cationic antibiotic polypeptides, which may allow bacteria to survive within macrophages. The PmrAB system also confers resistance to Fe³⁺-mediated killing. New targets of the system have recently been discovered that seem not to have a role in the well-described functions of PmrAB, suggesting that the PmrAB-dependent regulon might contain additional, unidentified targets.

Results

We performed an in silico analysis of possible targets of the PmrAB system. Using a motif model of the PmrA binding site in DNA, genome-wide screening was carried out to detect PmrAB target genes. To increase confidence in the predictions, all putative targets were subjected to a cross-species comparison (phylogenetic footprinting) using a Gibbs sampling-based motif-detection procedure. As well as the known targets, we detected additional targets with unknown functions. Four of these were experimentally validated (yibD, aroQ, mig-13 and sseJ). Site-directed mutagenesis of the PmrA-binding site (PmrA box) in yibD revealed specific sequence requirements.

Conclusions

We demonstrated the efficiency of our procedure by recovering most of the known PmrAB-dependent targets and by identifying unknown targets that we were able to validate experimentally. We also pinpointed directions for further research that could help elucidate the S. typhimurium virulence pathway.