Lecture 6: Bacterial Genome Replication and Regulation 2 Flashcards
What is a constitutive gene?
-gene that is always expressed
What is an inducible gene?
- gene that requires activation. is normally in the off state
What is a repressible gene?
-gene that is normally on, and is able to be turned off.
The beta-galactosidase enzyme is what type of regulation?
inducible
The Trp operon utilizes what type of regulation?
- repressible
How do regulatory proteins control transcription initiation?
- contain DNA binding domains in order to interact with DNA
- inhibit or promote transcription
- utilize allosteric regulatory sites (coreceptors)
What happens to induce negative control of an inducible gene?
-a repressor protein binds at the operator, and prevents binding of RNA polymerase and therefore prevents transcription
What control is being applied if a repressor protein is bound at a promoter but no transcription is taking place?
negative control of inducible gene
How can an inducible gene under negative control start transcription?
the inducer binds with the repressor protein, removing it from the promoter and allowing transcription to occur
Negative control of a repressible gene with no presence of a co-repressor produces what effect?
without the co-repressor the repressor protein will not bind to the promoter and transcription will occur
Negative control of a repressible gene with the presence of a co-repressor produces what effect?
the co-repressor will bind with the repressor protein, and then bind the promoter and inhibit transcription
Positive control of an inducible gene with no inducer has what effect?
no inducer is able to activate the activator protein, which is required to start transcription.
-transcription will not take place
Positive control of an inducible gene when the inducer is present has what effect?
the inducer binds to the activator protein and binds to the promoter region, which will activate transcription
Positive control of a repressible gene when there is no inhibitor present has what effect?
no inhibitor, means the activator protein is bound and allows transcription to take place
Positive control of a repressible gene when there is an inhibitor present will have what effects?
the inhibitor will bind with the activator gene and prevent binding at the promoter region. Thus preventing transcription
What happens when the lac repressor binds to the operator?
The repressor causes a conformational change of the lac operator, by looping it, to conceal/hide the coding sequence
When does the lac repressor become active? Or when does it bind to the lac operon?
lac repressor binds to the lac operon and prevents transcription when lactose is not present
When lactose is present in an environment what happens to the lac operon?
- lacl (regulatory region) transcribes mRNA to form allolactose which binds the lac repressor
- inhibited lac repressor canât bind to lac operator.
- RNA polymerase transcribes the lac operon
The use of the lac repressor gene is characteristic of what type of gene control?
negative
Positive control of the lac operon utilizes what proteins?
CAP; catabolite activator protein, which requires cAMP as a co-activator
What does the presence of glucose do to the CAP?
-glucose presence prevents binding of CAP, and therefore prevents transcription
What happens to CAP in the absence of glucose?
with no glucose present the CAP is activated and transcription can occur depending on the repressor status
What happens to the lac operon when there is lactose but no glucose present?
- no glucose activates cAMP to bind with CAP, causing it to bind to the CAP site. (activate transcription)
- presence of lactose will produce allolactose, which will prevent the repressor from binding
- activator is active, repressor is not bound to operatorâ> transcription occurs
What happens to lac operon when neither lactose of glucose are present?
- no glucose activates cAMP to activate CAP. (activates transcription)
- no lactose, causes lac repressor to bind to lac promoter/operator (inhibit transcription)
- no transcription will occur
What happens when lactose and glucose are present?
- glucose presence prevents cAMP forming, prevents activation of CAP (no transcription)
- lactose presence binds the lac repressor with allolactose (promoting transcription)
- no activator proteinâ> no transcription
What happens when glucose is present but no lactose is present?
- glucose presence prevents cAMP forming, preventing activation of CAP (no transcription)
- no lactose allows repressor to bind lac operator and promoter (no transcription)
- no transcription occurs at all
Why are the levels of cAMP based on the level of glucose?
the catalysis of PEP produces phosphate that must go somewhere.
- glucose is present: phosphate is transferred to glucose;cAMP levels decline
- no glucose; phosphate transferred to adenyl cyclase, which activates cAMP
The Trp operon is mostly under what type of control?
- negative control via repressible genes
What happens with the Trp operon during low levels of tryptophan?
- The trpR codes for mRNA to produce an inactive trp repressor.
- Low levels of trp, will not have any trp available to bind to the repressor.
- RNA polym will bind to the promoter and transcription will begin
What happens to the trp operon when trp is readily available within the body?
- The trpR codes and forms mRNA to form the repressible protein.
- Excess trp is readily able to bind to the repressor protein
- The repressor then binds to the operator and prevents transcription of trp.
Why does it make sense for the trp operon to be under negative repressible control?
If the body already has readily available sources of trp, it does not need to waste energy to form more. Therefore the gene is âhiddenâ to conserve energy
What happens to the ara operon when arabinose is not present in the cell?
- Arabinose will not be available to bind to the AraC protein
- The AraC protein will form a dimer between the binding sites of the operator and the initiation site.
- This will prevent binding of RNA polymerase, and arabinose will not be produced.
What happens to the ara operon when arabinose is readily available to the cell?
- Arabinose binds with the AraC protein, breaking the dimer loop.
- The AraC proteins form dimers but on the same motif, therefore not causing a structural alteration to the DNA strand
- CAP+cAMP protein is able to bind to promote transcription
- RNA polymerase binds and begins transcription
What is attenuation?
- The controlled regulation of termination of transcription
Riboswitches play a large role in what function?
- contributing to attenuation regulation
Attenuation of the trp operon leads to the formation of what structures?
Hairpins form on the RNA strand that control the transcription.
-this is controlled by what regions of the RNA are pairing together to form hairpins