Evidence that regulatory protein MarA of Escherichia coli represses rob by steric hindrance

The MarA protein of Escherichia coli can both activate and repress the initiation of transcription, depending on the position and orientation of its degenerate 20-bp binding site ('marbox') at the promoter. For all three known repressed genes, the marbox overlaps the promoter. It has been reported that MarA represses the rob promoter via an RNA polymerase (RNAP)-DNA-MarA ternary complex. Under similar conditions, we found a ternary complex for the repressed purA promoter also. These findings, together with the backwards orientation of repressed marboxes, suggested a unique interaction of MarA with RNAP in repression. However, no repression-specific residues of MarA could be found among 38 single-alanine replacement mutations previously shown to retain activation function or among mutants from random mutagenesis. Mutations Thrl2Ala, Arg36Ala, Thr95Ile, and Prol06Ala were more damaging for activation than for repression, some up to 10-fold, so these residues may play a specific role in activation. We found that nonspecific binding of RNAP to promoterless regions of DNA was presumably responsible for the ternary complexes seen previously. When RNAP binding was promoter specific, MarA reduced RNAP access to the rob promoter; there was little or no ternary complex. These findings strongly implicate steric hindrance as the mechanism of repression of rob by MarA. doi: 10.1128/JB.00103-10