Two developmentally controlled promoters of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) that resemble the major class of motility-related promoters in other bacteria.

Experiments were designed to allow isolation of Streptomyces coelicolor promoters that depend on the whiG sporulation gene, which encodes a putative sigma factor important in the sporulation of aerial hyphae. The strategy, based on earlier evidence that sigma WhiG is limiting for sporulation (K. F. Chater, C. J. Burton, K. A. Plaskitt, M. J. Buttner, C. Méndez, and J. Helmann, Cell 59:133-143, 1989) was to seek DNA fragments that inhibit sporulation in aerial hyphae when present at a high copy number. In a suitable Sau3AI-generated library of DNA from S. coelicolor A3(2), two inserts were found to inhibit sporulation. Both inserts caused expression of the adjacent xylE reporter gene present in the vector in a developmentally normal strain of S. coelicolor, but there was no xylE expression in an otherwise isogenic whiG mutant. S1 nuclease protection experiments were done with RNAs isolated from these plasmid-bearing strains or from the wild-type strain lacking either recombinant plasmid. In each case, an apparent transcription start site was found upstream of an apparent open reading frame (ORF) and just downstream of sequences that resemble consensus features of promoters for motility-related genes in Bacillus subtilis and coliform bacteria. Such promoters depend on sigma factors (sigma D and sigma F, respectively) particularly similar to the deduced whiG gene product. Each of the putative whiG-dependent promoters is within an ORF that is upstream of, and potentially translationally coupled to, the putative whiG-dependent ORF (although use of one of the promoters would necessitate the use of a different start codon, further downstream). Thus, in unknown circumstances, the whiG-dependent ORFs may be expressed from a more remote promoter as part of a complex transcription unit.