Heat induction of hsp18 gene expression in Streptomyces albus G: transcriptional and posttranscriptional regulation.

In Streptomyces albus G, HSP18, a protein belonging to the small heat shock protein family, could be detected only at high temperature. The nucleotide sequence of the DNA region upstream from hsp18 contains an open reading frame (orfY) which is in the opposite orientation and 150 bp upstream. This open reading frame encodes a basic protein of 225 amino acids showing no significant similarity to any proteins found in data banks. Disruption of this gene in the S. albus chromosome generated mutants that synthesized hsp18 RNA at 30 degrees C, suggesting that orfY plays either a direct or indirect role in the transcriptional regulation of the hsp18 gene. In addition, thermally induced expression of the hsp18 gene is subject to posttranscriptional regulation. In the orfY mutant, although hsp18 RNA was synthesized at a high level at 30 degrees C, the HSP18 protein could not be detected except after heat shock. Synthesis of the HSP18 protein in the orfY mutant was also heat inducible when transcription was inhibited by rifampin. Furthermore, when wild-type cultures of S. albus were shifted from high temperature to 30 degrees C, synthesis of the gene product could no longer be detected, even though large amounts of hsp18 RNA were present.