Relaxed control of sugar utilization in Parageobacillus thermoglucosidasius DSM 2542

Though carbon catabolite repression (CCR) has been intensively studied in some more characterised organisms, there is a lack of information of CCR in thermophiles. In this work, CCR in the thermophile, Parageobacillus thermoglucosidasius DSM 2542 has been studied during growth on pentose sugars in the presence of glucose. Physiological studies under fermentative conditions revealed a loosely controlled CCR when DSM 2542 was grown in minimal medium supplemented with a mixture of glucose and xylose. This atypical CCR pattern was also confirmed by studying xylose isomerase expression level by qRT-PCR. Fortuitously, the pheB gene, which encodes catechol 2, 3-dioxygenase was found to have a cre site highly similar to the consensus catabolite-responsive element (cre) at its 3′ end and was used to confirm that expression of pheB from a plasmid was under stringent CCR control. Bioinformatic analysis suggested that the CCR regulation of xylose metabolism in P. thermoglucosidasius DSM 2542 might occur primarily via control of expression of pentose transporter operons. Relaxed control of sugar utilization might reflect a lower affinity of the CcpA-HPr (Ser46-P) or CcpA-Crh (Ser46-P) complexes to the cre(s) in these operons.