Regulation of an antibiotic resistance efflux pump by quorum sensing and a TetR-family repressor in .

The soil bacterium uses a single LuxI-R-type quorum-sensing system, CviI-R, to regulate genes in a cell density-dependent manner. CviI synthesizes the signal -hexanoyl-homoserine lactone (C6-HSL) and CviR is a C6-HSL-responsive cytoplasmic transcription regulator. C6-HSL-bound CviR activates dozens of genes, for example the cluster coding for an efflux pump conferring antibiotic resistance. The genes are also regulated by an antibiotic-responsive transcription factor, CdeR, which represses expression of these genes. We are interested in understanding how integrates different environmental cues to regulate antibiotic resistance. In this study, we sought to delineate the mechanism of regulation of the genes by CviR and CdeR. In recombinant the promoter is activated by CviR and repressed by CdeR. We identify non-overlapping sequence elements in the promoter that are required for CviR activation and CdeR repression, respectively. We also examined the role of CdeR in modulating activation by C6-HSL in . We show that CviR and CdeR can independently modulate transcription from the promoter in , consistent with the conclusion that CviR and CdeR regulate the genes by interacting directly with different binding sites in the promoter. These results contribute to a molecular understanding of how the genes are regulated and provide new insight into how integrates different environmental cues to regulate antibiotic resistance.