Molecular cloning of an osmoregulatory locus in Escherichia coli: increased proU gene dosage results in enhanced osmotolerance.

The proU locus in Escherichia coli encodes an important osmoregulatory function which mediates the growth-promoting effect of L-proline and glycine betaine in high-osmolarity media. This locus was cloned, in contiguity with a closely linked Tn10 insertion, onto a multicopy plasmid directly from the E. coli chromosome. For a given level of osmotic stress, the magnitude of osmoresponsive induction of a single-copy proU::lac fusion was reduced in strains with multiple copies of the proU+ genes; in comparison with haploid proU+ strains, strains with the multicopy proU+ plasmids also exhibited enhanced osmotolerance in media supplemented with 1 mM L-proline or glycine betaine. Experiments involving subcloning, Tn1000 mutagenesis, and interplasmid complementation in a deletion mutant provided evidence for the presence at this locus of two cistrons, both of which are necessary for the expression of ProU function. We propose the designations proU for the gene originally identified by the proU224::Mu d1(lac Ap) insertion and proV for the gene upstream (that is, counterclockwise) of proU.