Antibiotic Production, Linear Plasmids and Linear Chromosomes in Streptomyces
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Actinomycetologica (2008) 22:20–29 Copyright Ó 2008 The Society for Actinomycetes Japan VOL. 22, NO. 1 Award Lecture Antibiotic production, linear plasmids and linear chromosomes in Streptomyces Haruyasu Kinashi Department of Molecular Biotechnology, Graduate School of Advanced Sciences of Matter, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8530, Japan (Received May 12, 2008 / Accepted May 12, 2008 / Published Jun. 25, 2008) INTRODUCTION plasmid pSLA2 from Streptomyces rochei 7434AN4, which produces two structurally unrelated polyketide antibiotics, Streptomyces species are saprophytic soil bacteria that lankacidin and lankamycin (Fig. 1). They succeeded in have been found to carry an 8–9 Mb linear chromosome. isolating pSLA2 using a neutral DNA extraction method, Preceding the finding of linear chromosomes from Strep- the usual alkaline methods for circular plasmids being tomyces, linear plasmids with extensively similar structural unable to recover linear DNA. Physical analysis revealed features were isolated. Streptomyces linear chromosomes that pSLA2 is 17 kb in size and is structurally similar to and plasmids have terminal inverted repeats (TIRs) at both adenovirus and bacteriophage 29 DNA; TIRs are present ends and the 50 ends are blocked by a terminal protein. at both ends and a terminal protein is bound to the 50 Streptomyces linear plasmids are proving to be widely ends (Hirochika & Sakaguchi, 1982; Hirochika et al., distributed and involved in antibiotic production, degrada- 1985). However, it was later found that pSLA2 was not tion of aromatic compounds, phytopathogenicity and other involved in antibiotic production. functions. It appears that linear plasmids may have con- tributed to horizontal transfer of secondary metabolism in Detection of giant linear plasmids by pulsed-field gel microorganisms. electrophoresis Streptomyces linear chromosomes display dynamic re- In 1981 I started to study the function of pSLA2 arrangements, which frequently result in the formation of in antibiotic production in Dr. Sakaguchi’s laboratory, circular chromosomes by fusion of both deletion ends. In Mitsubishi-Kasei Institute of Life Sciences, where pSLA2 addition, a single crossover of the linear plasmid SCP1 and had been isolated and analyzed. We constructed many the linear chromosome of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) mutants by various mutagenic treatments of the parent generated two chimeric linear chromosomes. These rear- strain 7434AN4, and analyzed the production of lankacidin rangements have provided important hints on the evolution and lankamycin and the presence/absence of pSLA2 using of bacterial chromosomes. Since I have been involved conventional agarose gel electrophoresis. However, we in many of these processes, I would like to review here could not find any correlation between them. the story focusing on our own results on the occasion of In 1984 I had a chance to study abroad in Prof. receiving the SAJ Award. Hutchinson’s laboratory, Wisconsin University, where I investigated biosynthesis of the polyether antibiotic Plasmids in antibiotic production lasalocid in Streptomyces lasaliensis NRRL3382R. This It has long been suggested that plasmids are involved in project was related to the theme of my doctoral work, in antibiotic production in Streptomyces species, based on the which I determined the chemical structure of the polyether genetic instability of antibiotic-producing ability. In partic- antibiotic salinomycin by X-ray crystallography (Kinashi ular, extensive genetic studies of Prof. Hopwood, John et al., 1973) and studied its mass spectrometry and Innes Centre, confirmed that the plasmid SCP1 carried the structure-activity relationship under the supervision of biosynthetic genes for methylenomycin (mmy)inStrepto- Prof. Otake in Tokyo University. Although we constructed myces coelicolor A3(2) (Kirby et al., 1975; Kirby & many lasalocid-nonproducing mutants, attempted cosyn- Hopwood, 1977). Furthermore, the mmy gene cluster was thesis experiments with many combinations all failed to cloned by mutational cloning and analyzed in detail (Chater give positive lasalocid production (Kinashi et al., 1988). & Bruton, 1985), even though SCP1 itself was still resistant This result suggested that all of the mutants might have the to isolation and its physical identity had not been clarified. same genetic defect in antibiotic production, for example, This situation changed in 1987 when the application of the loss of a plasmid carrying the biosynthetic gene cluster pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) to Streptomyces for lasalocid. However, we could not detect such a plasmid DNA revealed that SCP1 was a giant linear plasmid of with conventional agarose gel electrophoresis. about 350 kb (Kinashi et al., 1987). After I returned to Japan, Dr. Sakai, who was using one Molecular studies of Streptomyces linear plasmids began of the first OFAGE (orthogonal-field-alternation gel elec- in 1979 when Hayakawa et al. (1979) isolated a linear trophoresis) machines in Japan for yeast molecular biology, 20 ACTINOMYCETOLOGICA VOL. 22, NO. 1 Fig. 1. Secondary metabolites produced by S. rochei 7434AN4 and its mutant. suggested that I should use PFGE. I applied this method a sheared purine-purine (typically, guanine-adenine) pair. to S. lasaliensis NRRL3382R and detected a giant linear Eventually, the complete nucleotide sequence (356,023 bp) plasmid pKSL of about 520 kb (Kinashi & Shimaji, 1987). of SCP1 was determined (Bentley et al., 2004), which In due course, I collected several antibiotic-producing confirmed the size of the TIRs (75,122 bp) and located strains whose antibiotic production was suggested to be the mmy gene cluster, a replication origin, two partition plasmid-determined, and detected many giant linear plas- genes (parA and parB) and others. However, a conserved mids (Kinashi & Shimaji, 1987; Kinashi et al., 1994; terminal protein gene (tpg) (Bao & Cohen, 2001; Yang et Kinashi, 1994; Kinashi et al., 1995) including SCP1 from al., 2002) could not be identified from the sequence data, S. coelicolor A3(2) (Kinashi et al., 1987). In this con- because of the unique telomere sequence of SCP1. Later, nection, I later talked with Prof. Schrempf, Osnabruck Huang et al. (2007) isolated the terminal protein as a University, who said ‘‘You were lucky to use S. coelicolor complex with SCP1; finally identifying the unique tpc A3(2) strains, because we used Streptomyces lividans and (terminal protein of SCP1, orf127) and tac (terminal could not detect SCP1 due to DNA degradation in this associated protein of SCP1, orf125) genes of SCP1. species.’’ This DNA degradation problem in S. lividans was solved by changing the buffer for electrophoresis (Zhou Secondary metabolism-related genes on pSLA2-L et al., 1988) and was finally found to be caused by site- As mentioned above, the linear plasmid pSLA2 proved specific phosphorothioation of DNA (Wang et al., 2007). not to be involved in antibiotic production. The application of PFGE to S. rochei 7434AN4 revealed two linear Physical characterization of SCP1 plasmids, pSLA2-L (210 kb) and pSLA2-M (110 kb) in Among the many linear plasmids detected in antibiotic- addition to pSLA2-S (=pSLA2, 17 kb) (Kinashi et al., producing Streptomyces strains, we at first chose SCP1 1994). We analyzed plasmid profiles of all mutants derived for detailed analysis, because it had been studied the from strain 7434AN4 and found a complete correlation most extensively. Treatment of SCP1 with exonuclease III between the presence of the largest plasmid pSLA2-L and caused DNA digestion, while exonuclease treatment did the production of both lankacidin and lankamycin. South- not, suggesting that the 50 ends are blocked by a terminal ern hybridization using two polyketide biosynthetic probes, protein (Kinashi & Shimaji-Murayama, 1991). Restriction eryAI for erythromycin and actI for actinorhodin, revealed mapping with EcoRV (Kinashi & Shimaji-Murayama, two homologous regions to each probe (Kinashi et al., 1991) and then EcoRI (Redenbach et al., 1998) revealed 1998), the eryAI–related sequences being identified as that SCP1 contained TIRs of about 80 kb. At the inside end lankamycin biosynthetic genes (Suwa et al., 2000). How- of TIR-R, an insertion sequence (IS466) was identified, ever, the location of the lankacidin cluster was not which suggested its involvement in the formation of the identified. TIRs (Kinashi et al., 1991). Thus, we started to sequence pSLA2-L, beginning from a Cloning and sequencing of the terminal fragments cosmid library of strain 51252 that carried only pSLA2-L. revealed that the telomere sequence of SCP1 could not Nucleotide sequencing was done using five ordered form a Y-shaped foldback structure (Kinashi et al., 1991), a cosmids and four plasmids containing a left or right feature later shown to be conserved in most Streptomyces terminal fragment. This revealed the sizes of pSLA2-L linear replicons (Huang et al., 1998) (Fig. 2). However, (210,614 bp) and the TIRs (1,992 bp), the GC content many hairpin loop structures could still be made. It is (72.8%), and 143 open reading frames (orfs) (Mochizuki et noteworthy that all of the loops consist of four nucleotides al., 2003). pSLA2-L has a conserved telomere sequence, rather than the usual three nucleotides, and are stabilized by which can make a typical Y-shaped foldback structure 21 ACTINOMYCETOLOGICA VOL. 22, NO. 1 Fig. 2. Y-shaped foldback structures and hairpin loops that can be formed at the 30 ends of Streptomyces linear chromosomes and plasmids. Purine-purine