PMID:12829265

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Citation

Brown, NL, Stoyanov, JV, Kidd, SP and Hobman, JL (2003) The MerR family of transcriptional regulators. FEMS Microbiol. Rev. 27:145-63

Abstract

The MerR family is a group of transcriptional activators with similar N-terminal helix-turn-helix DNA binding regions and C-terminal effector binding regions that are specific to the effector recognised. The signature of the family is amino acid similarity in the first 100 amino acids, including a helix-turn-helix motif followed by a coiled-coil region. With increasing recognition of members of this class over the last decade, particularly with the advent of rapid bacterial genome sequencing, MerR-like regulators have been found in a wide range of bacterial genera, but not yet in archaea or eukaryotes. The few MerR-like regulators that have been studied experimentally have been shown to activate suboptimal sigma(70)-dependent promoters, in which the spacing between the -35 and -10 elements recognised by the sigma factor is greater than the optimal 17+/-1 bp. Activation of transcription is through protein-dependent DNA distortion. The majority of regulators in the family respond to environmental stimuli, such as oxidative stress, heavy metals or antibiotics. A subgroup of the family activates transcription in response to metal ions. This subgroup shows sequence similarity in the C-terminal effector binding region as well as in the N-terminal region, but it is not yet clear how metal discrimination occurs. This subgroup of MerR family regulators includes MerR itself and may have evolved to generate a variety of specific metal-responsive regulators by fine-tuning the sites of metal recognition.

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Keywords

Amino Acid Sequence; Bacterial Proteins/chemistry; Bacterial Proteins/genetics; Bacterial Proteins/metabolism; DNA-Binding Proteins/chemistry; DNA-Binding Proteins/genetics; DNA-Binding Proteins/metabolism; Evolution, Molecular; Genes, Bacterial/genetics; Metals/metabolism; Models, Genetic; Molecular Sequence Data; Protein Structure, Tertiary; Sequence Alignment; Transcription Factors/chemistry; Transcription Factors/classification; Transcription Factors/metabolism

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