Structure of the puf operon of the obligately aerobic, bacteriochlorophyll alpha-containing bacterium Roseobacter denitrificans OCh114 and its expression in a Rhodobacter capsulatus puf puc deletion mutant.

Roseobacter denitrificans (Erythrobacter species strain OCh114) synthesizes bacteriochlorophyll a (BChl) and the photosynthetic apparatus only in the presence of oxygen and is unable to carry out primary photosynthetic reactions and to grow photosynthetically under anoxic conditions. The puf operon of R. denitrificans has the same five genes in the same order as in many photosynthetic bacteria, i.e., pufBALMC. PufC, the tetraheme subunit of the reaction center (RC), consists of 352 amino acids (Mr, 39,043); 20 and 34% of the total amino acids are identical to those of PufC of Chloroflexus aurantiacus and Rubrivivax gelatinosus, respectively. The N-terminal hydrophobic domain is probably responsible for anchoring the subunit in the membrane. Four heme-binding domains are homologous to those of PufC in several purple bacteria. Sequences similar to pufQ and pufX of Rhodobacter capsulatus were not detected on the chromosome of R. denitrificans. The puf operon of R. denitrificans was expressed in trans in Escherichia coli, and all gene products were synthesized. The Roseobacter puf operon was also expressed in R. capsulatus CK11, a puf puc double-deletion mutant. For the first time, an RC/light-harvesting complex I core complex was heterologously synthesized. The strongest expression of the R. denitrificans puf operon was observed under the control of the R. capsulatus puf promoter, in the presence of pufQ and pufX and in the absence of pufC. Charge recombination between the primary donor P+ and the primary ubiquinone Q(A)- was observed in the transconjugant, showing that the M and L subunits of the RC were correctly assembled. The transconjugants did not grow photosynthetically under anoxic conditions.