Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular y Celular e Instituto de Biocomputación y Física de Sistemas Complejos (Bifi), Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain.
Didáctica de las Ciencias Experimentales y la Matemáticas, Universidad de Extremadura, Cáceres, Spain.
PLoS Biol. 2024 Mar 11;22(3):e3002546. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002546. eCollection 2024 Mar.
Bacteria have developed fine-tuned responses to cope with potential zinc limitation. The Zur protein is a key player in coordinating this response in most species. Comparative proteomics conducted on the cyanobacterium Anabaena highlighted the more abundant proteins in a zur mutant compared to the wild type. Experimental evidence showed that the exoprotein ZepA mediates zinc uptake. Genomic context of the zepA gene and protein structure prediction provided additional insights on the regulation and putative function of ZepA homologs. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that ZepA represents a primordial system for zinc acquisition that has been conserved for billions of years in a handful of species from distant bacterial lineages. Furthermore, these results show that Zur may have been one of the first regulators of the FUR family to evolve, consistent with the scarcity of zinc in the ecosystems of the Archean eon.
细菌已经发展出精细的响应机制来应对潜在的锌限制。Zur 蛋白是大多数物种协调这一反应的关键因素。在蓝藻鱼腥藻上进行的比较蛋白质组学研究突出了 zur 突变体中比野生型更丰富的蛋白质。实验证据表明，外蛋白 ZepA 介导锌的摄取。zepA 基因的基因组背景和蛋白质结构预测为 ZepA 同源物的调节和可能的功能提供了更多的见解。系统发育分析表明，ZepA 代表了一种原始的锌获取系统，在数十亿年的时间里，在来自不同细菌谱系的少数几种物种中得到了保守。此外，这些结果表明，Zur 可能是第一个进化的 FUR 家族的调节剂之一，这与太古代生态系统中锌的稀缺性是一致的。
