Investigation of the YycFG two-component signal transduction system in Bacillus subtilis

Abstract

The work in this thesis describes a novel approach to investigating the YycFG two-component signal transduction system of Bacillus subtilis. The YycFG TCSTS was found to be the only essential two-component signal transduction system in B. subtilis, a discovery made possible by the completion of the B. subtilis genome sequencing project in 1997 (Fabret and Hoch, 1998; Fabret et al , 1999; Kunst et al., 1997). Because of the essential nature of the YycFG system, the application of conventional methods for establishing the regulon of an uncharacterized signal transduction system is not possible. Therefore we sought to establish the YycFG TCSTS regulon by an innovative approach involving the construction and expression of a hybrid response regulator. The hybrid response regulator consisted o f the receiver (or regulatory) domain of PhoP and the output (or effector) domain of YycF.