RNA polymerase involvement in the regulation of expression of Salmonella typhimurium pyr genes. Isolation and characterization of a fluorouracil-resistant mutant with high, constitutive expression of the pyrB and pyrE genes due to a mutation in rpoBC.

A mutant of Salmonella typhimurium with a defect in the regulation of pyr-gene expression was obtained during a selection for mutants resistant to a combination of the two pyrimidine analogs, 5-fluorouracil and 5-fluorouridine. The mutant possesses 4-fold elevated pools of the pyrimidine nucleoside triphosphatases, UTP and CTP. The specific activities of aspartate transcarbamylase and orotate phosphoribosyltransferase are 40-fold and 7-fold higher in the mutant than in the parent strain when grown in minimal media. Furthermore, the synthesis of the two enzymes in the mutant is not repressed following addition of exogenous pyrimidines. The levels of carbamoylphosphate synthase and orotidine 5'-monophosphate decarboxylase are approximately 3-fold enhanced, while the activities of dihydroorotase and dihydroorotate oxidase appear largely unaffected by the mutation. The mutation responsible for these effects was shown to map between two known point mutations in the rpoBC gene cluster encoding the beta and beta' subunits of RNA polymerase. These observations indicate a regulatory function of RNA polymerase in the control of pyr-gene expression in S. typhimurium.