Enzyme I and HPr from Lactobacillus casei: their role in sugar transport, carbon catabolite repression and inducer exclusion.

We have cloned and sequenced the Lactobacillus casei ptsH and ptsI genes, which encode enzyme I and HPr, respectively, the general components of the phosphoenolpyruvate-carbohydrate phosphotransferase system (PTS). Northern blot analysis revealed that these two genes are organized in a single-transcriptional unit whose expression is partially induced. The PTS plays an important role in sugar transport in L. casei, as was confirmed by constructing enzyme I-deficient L. casei mutants, which were unable to ferment a large number of carbohydrates (fructose, mannose, mannitol, sorbose, sorbitol, amygdaline, arbutine, salicine, cellobiose, lactose, tagatose, trehalose and turanose). Phosphorylation of HPr at Ser-46 is assumed to be important for the regulation of sugar metabolism in Gram-positive bacteria. L. casei ptsH mutants were constructed in which phosphorylation of HPr at Ser-46 was either prevented or diminished (replacement of Ser-46 of HPr with Ala or Thr respectively). In a third mutant, Ile-47 of HPr was replaced with a threonine, which was assumed to reduce the affinity of P-Ser-HPr for its target protein CcpA. The ptsH mutants exhibited a less pronounced lag phase during diauxic growth in a mixture of glucose and lactose, two PTS sugars, and diauxie was abolished when cells were cultured in a mixture of glucose and the non-PTS sugars ribose or maltose. The ptsH mutants synthesizing Ser-46-Ala or Ile-47-Thr mutant HPr were partly or completely relieved from carbon catabolite repression (CCR), suggesting that the P-Ser-HPr/CcpA-mediated mechanism of CCR is common to most low G+C Gram-positive bacteria. In addition, in the three constructed ptsH mutants, glucose had lost its inhibitory effect on maltose transport, providing for the first time in vivo evidence that P-Ser-HPr participates also in inducer exclusion.