Sugar transport by the marine chitinolytic bacterium Vibrio furnissii. Molecular cloning and analysis of the glucose and N-acetylglucosamine permeases.

Chitin catabolism by the marine bacterium Vibrio furnissii involves chemotaxis to and transport of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (GlcNAc) and D-glucose. We report the properties of the respective permeases that complemented E. coli Glc- Man- mutants. Although the V. furnissii Glc-specific permease (55,941 Da) shares 38% identity with E. coli IIGlc (ptsG), it is 67% identical to MalX of the E. coli maltose operon (Reidl, J., and Boos, W. (1991) J. Bacteriol. 173, 4862-4876). An adjacent open reading frame encodes a protein with 52% identity to E. coli MalY. Glc phosphorylation requires only V. furnissii MalX and the accessory phosphoenolpyruvate:glycose phosphotransferase system proteins. The V. furnissii equivalent of IIGlc was not found in the 25,000 transformants screened. The GlcNAc/Glc-specific permease (52,894 Da) shares 47% identity with the N-terminal, hydrophobic domain of E. coli IINag, but is unique among IINag proteins in that it lacks the C-terminal domain and thus requires IIIGlc for sugar fermentation in vivo and phosphorylation in vitro. While there are similarities between the phosphoenolpyruvate:glycose phosphotransferase system of V. furnissii and enteric bacteria, the differences may be important for survival of V. furnissii in the marine environment.