Coexpression of the long and short forms of CheA, the chemotaxis histidine kinase, by members of the family Enterobacteriaceae.

CheA is the histidine protein kinase of a two-component signal transduction system required for bacterial chemotaxis. Motile cells of the enteric species Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium synthesize two forms of CheA by utilizing in-frame initiation sites within the gene cheA. The full-length protein, CheAL, plays an essential role in the chemotactic signaling pathway. In contrast, the function of the short form, CheAs, remains elusive. Although CheAs lacks the histidine residue that becomes phosphorylated in CheAL, it exhibits both kinase activity and the ability to interact with and enhance the activity of CheZ, a chemotaxis protein that accelerates dephosphorylation of the two-component response regulator CheY. To determine whether other members of the family Enterobacteriaceae express CheAs and CheZ, we analyzed immunoblots of proteins from clinical isolates of a variety of enteric species. All motile, chemotactic isolates that we tested coexpressed CheAL, CheAs, and CheZ. The only exceptions were closely related plant pathogens of the genus Erwinia, which expressed CheAL and CheZ but not CheAs. We also analyzed nucleotide sequences of the cheA loci from isolates of Serratia marcescens and Enterobacter cloacae, demonstrating the presence of in-frame translation initiation sites similar to those observed in the cheA loci of E. coli and S. typhimurium. Since coexpression of CheAs and CheZ appears to be limited to motile, chemotactic enteric bacteria, we propose that CheAs may play an important role in chemotactic responses in some environmental niches encountered by enteric species.