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The ferric uptake regulator (Fur) family proteins include sensors of Fe (Fur), Zn (Zur), and peroxide (PerR). Among Fur family proteins, Fur and Zur are ubiquitous in most prokaryotic organisms, whereas PerR exists mainly in Gram positive bacteria as a functional homologue of OxyR. Gram positive bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis, Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus encode three Fur family proteins: Fur, Zur, and PerR. In this study, we identified five Fur family proteins from B. licheniformis: two novel PerR-like proteins (BL00690 and BL00950) in addition to Fur (BL05249), Zur (BL03703), and PerR (BL00075) homologues. Our data indicate that all of the five B. licheniformis Fur homologues contain a structural Zn2+ site composed of four cysteine residues like many other Fur family proteins. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the PerR-like proteins (BL00690 and BL00950) as well as PerRBL (BL00075), but not FurBL (BL05249) and ZurBL (BL03703), can sense H2O2 by histidine oxidation with different sensitivity. We also show that PerR2 (BL00690) has a PerR-like repressor activity for PerR-regulated genes in vivo. Taken together, our results suggest that B. licheniformis contains three PerR subfamily proteins which can sense H2O2 by histidine oxidation not by cysteine oxidation, in addition to Fur and Zur.

Bacillus subtilis PerR is a metal-dependent peroxide-sensing transcription factor which uses metal-catalyzed histidine oxidation for peroxide-sensing. PerR contains two metal binding sites, one for structural Zn 2+ and the other for the regulatory/peroxide-sensing metal. Here we investigated the effect of mutations at both the structural and regulatory metal binding sites on the oxidation of either H37 or H91, two of the peroxide-sensing ligands. All four serine substitution mutants at the structural Zn 2+ site (C96S, C99S, C136S and C139S) exhibited no detectable oxidation at histidine residues. Two of the alanine substitution mutants at regulatory metal site (H37A and D85A) exhibited selective oxidation preferentially at the H91-containing tryptic peptide, whereas no oxidation was detected in the other mutants (H91A, H93A and D104A). Our results suggest that the cysteine residues coordinating structural Zn 2+ are essential for peroxide sensing by PerR, and that the C-terminal regulatory metal binding site composed of H91, H93 and D104 can bind Fe 2+ , providing a possible explanation for the peroxide sensing mechanisms by PerR.

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