The regulatory network of the cell envelope stress response in Bacillus subtilis involves both extracytoplasmic function -factors and two-component signal transducing systems. One such system, LiaRS, responds to cell wall antibiotics that interfere with the undecaprenol cycle and to perturbation of the cytoplasmic membrane. It is encoded by the last two genes of the liaIHGFSR locus. Here, we analyzed the expression of two LiaRdependent operons, liaIHGFSR and yhcYZ-yhdA, and characterized a palindromic sequence required for LiaR-dependent activation. Since induction of the strong liaI promoter leads to both liaIH and liaIHGFRS transcripts, LiaR is positively autoregulated. Systematic deletion analysis of the liaI operon revealed that LiaF is a potent negative regulator of LiaR-dependent gene expression: a nonpolar liaF deletion led to constitutive activation of both characterized LiaR-dependent promoters. The liaF gene is conserved in both sequence and genomic context in the Firmicutes group of gram-positive bacteria, located directly upstream of liaSR orthologs. LiaH, a homolog of Escherichia coli phage shock protein A, also plays a more subtle role in negatively modulating the bacitracin-inducible expression from LiaR-dependent promoters. Our results support a model in which the LiaFRS module integrates both positive and negative feedback loops to transduce cell envelope stress signals.

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Gluconobacter oxydans, like all acetic acid bacteria, has several membrane-bound dehydrogenases, which oxidize a multitude of alcohols and polyols in a stereo- and regio-selective manner. Many membrane-bound dehydrogenases have been purified from various acetic acid bacteria, but in most cases without reporting associated sequence information. We constructed clean deletions of all membrane-bound dehydrogenases in G. oxydans 621H and investigated the resulting changes in carbon utilization and physiology of the organism during growth on fructose, mannitol, and glucose. Furthermore, we studied the substrate oxidation spectra of a set of strains where the membrane-bound dehydrogenases were consecutively deleted using a newly developed whole-cell 2,6-dichlorophenolindophenol (DCPIP) activity assay in microtiter plates. This allowed a detailed and comprehensive in vivo characterization of each membrane-bound dehydrogenase in terms of substrate specificity. The assays revealed that general rules can be established for some of the enzymes and extended the known substrate spectra of some enzymes. It was also possible to assign proteins whose purification and characterization had been reported previously, to their corresponding genes. Our data demonstrate that there are less membrane-bound dehydrogenases in G. oxydans 621H than expected and that the deletion of all of them is not lethal for the organism.

Gluconobacter oxydans, a biotechnologically relevant species which incompletely oxidizes a large variety of carbohydrates, alcohols, and related compounds, contains a gene for pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC). This enzyme is found only in very few species of bacteria where it is normally involved in anaerobic ethanol formation via acetaldehyde. In order to clarify the role of PDC in the strictly oxidative metabolism of acetic acid bacteria, we developed a markerless in-frame deletion system for strain G. oxydans 621H which uses 5-fluorouracil together with a plasmid-encoded uracil phosphoribosyltransferase as counter selection method and used this technique to delete the PDC gene (GOX1081) of G. oxydans 621H. The PDC deletion mutant accumulated large amounts of pyruvate but almost no acetate during growth on D-mannitol, D-fructose or in the presence of L-lactate. This suggested that in G. oxydans acetate formation occurs by decarboxylation of pyruvate and subsequent oxidation of acetaldehyde to acetate. This observation and the efficiency of the markerless deletion system were confirmed by constructing deletion mutants of two acetaldehyde dehydrogenases (GOX1122 and GOX2018) and of the acetyl-CoA-synthetase (GOX0412). Acetate formation during growth of these mutants on mannitol did not differ significantly from the wild-type strain.

After separation by column chromatography on silicagel and preparative gas chromatography 14 sesquiterpene hydrocarbons have been identified in aroma extracts from grapes by gas chromatography--mass spectrometry: alpha-copaene, beta-ylangene, beta-bourbonene, beta-caryophyllene, alpha-guaiene, alpha-humulene, alpha- and gamma-muurolene, germacren D, beta-selinene, alpha-farnesene, gamma- and delta-cadinene and calamenene.