Phosphorylation of the Rhizobium meliloti FixJ protein induces its binding to a compound regulatory region at the fixK promoter.

The FixJ protein is a member of the regulator class of two-component systems involved in the transcriptional activation of nitrogen fixation genes in Rhizobium meliloti. Phosphorylation of FixJ was previously demonstrated to dramatically enhance its transcriptional activity at the nifA and fixK promoters. Here we show that the isolated carboxyl-terminal domain of FixJ, FixJC, binds the fixK promoter, whereas binding of the full-length FixJ protein requires its phosphorylation. By analyzing the DNase I and Exonuclease III protection patterns of the wild-type and a mutant fixK promoter, we have identified two overlapping binding regions for both phosphorylated FixJ and FixJC. A higher affinity region is located between positions -69 and -44 relative to the transcription start site, and a lower affinity region, between positions -57 and -31, overlaps the -35 region of the promoter.