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Background: Bacteria integrate numerous environmental stimuli when generating cellular responses. Increasing numbers of examples describe how one two-component system (TCS) responds to signals detected by the sensor of another TCS. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain poorly defined. Results: Here, we report a connector-like factor that affects the activity of the CpxR/CpxA two-component system in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. We isolated a clone that induced the expression of a cpxP-lac gene fusion from a high-copy-number plasmid pool of random Salmonella genomic fragments. A 63-amino acid protein, CacA, was responsible for the CpxA/CpxR-dependent activation of the cpxP gene. The CpxR-activated genes cpxP and spy exhibited approximately 30% and 50% reductions in transcription, respectively, in a clean cacA deletion mutant strain in comparison to wild-type. From 33 response regulator (RR) deletion mutants, we identified that the RssB regulator represses cacA transcription. Substitution mutations in a conserved -10 region harboring the RNA polymerase recognition sequence, which is well conserved with a known RpoS -10 region consensus sequence, rendered the cacA promoter RpoS-independent. The CacA-mediated induction of cpxP transcription was affected in a trxA deletion mutant, which encodes thioredoxin 1, suggesting a role for cysteine thiol-disulfide exchange(s) in CacA-dependent Cpx activation. Conclusions: We identified CacA as an activator of the CpxR/CpxA system in the plasmid clone. We propose that CacA may integrate the regulatory status of RssB/RpoS into the CpxR/CpxA system. Future investigations are necessary to thoroughly elucidate how CacA activates the CpxR/CpxA system.

A. The purpose of this article is to describe explicitly the polylogarithm class in absolute Hodge cohomology of a product of multiplicative groups, in terms of the Bloch-Wigner-Ramakrishnan polylogarithm functions. We will use the logarithmic Dolbeault complex defined by Burgos to calculate the corresponding absolute Hodge cohomology groups.

The purpose of this article is to newly define the p-adic polylogarithm as an equivariant class in the cohomology of a certain infinite disjoint union of algebraic tori associated to a totally real field. We will then express the special values of p-adic L-functions interpolating nonpositive values of Hecke L-functions of the totally real field in terms of special values of these p-adic polylogarithms.

No abstract