One evolutionarily selected amino acid variation is sufficient to provide functional specificity in the cold shock protein paralogs of Staphylococcus aureus

Bacterial genomes encode several families of protein paralogs. Discrimination between functional divergence and redundancy among paralogs is challenging due to their sequence conservation. Here, we investigated whether the amino acid differences present in the cold shock protein (CSP) paralogs of St...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Catalán Moreno, Arancha, Caballero Sánchez, Carlos José, Irurzun, Naiara, Cuesta, Sergio, Lopez-Sagaseta, Jacinto, Toledo-Arana, Alejandro
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/227978
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/227978
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Cold shock proteins
CspA
Protein paralogs
Protein specificity
RNA chaperone
Staphylococcus aureus
Descripción
Sumario:Bacterial genomes encode several families of protein paralogs. Discrimination between functional divergence and redundancy among paralogs is challenging due to their sequence conservation. Here, we investigated whether the amino acid differences present in the cold shock protein (CSP) paralogs of Staphylococcus aureus were responsible for functional specificity. Since deletion of cspA reduces the synthesis of staphyloxanthin (STX), we used it as an in vivo reporter of CSP functionality. Complementation of a ΔcspA strain with the different S. aureus CSP variants showed that only CspA could specifically restore STX production by controlling the activity of the stress-associated sigma B factor (σ). To determine the amino acid residues responsible for CspA specificity, we created several chimeric CSPs that interchanged the amino acid differences between CspA and CspC, which shared the highest identity. We demonstrated that CspA Pro58 was responsible for the specific control of σ activity and its associated phenotypes. Interestingly, CspC gained the biological function of CspA when the E58P substitution was introduced. This study highlights how just one evolutionarily selected amino acid change may be sufficient to modify the specific functionality of CSP paralogs.