Identification of a gene in Staphylococcus xylosus encoding a novel glucose uptake protein

By transposon Tn917 mutagenesis, two mutants of Staphylococcus xylosus were isolated that showed higher levels of beta-galactosidase activity in the presence of glucose than the wild type. Both transposons integrated in a gene, designated glcU, encoding a protein involved in glucose uptake in S. xylosus, which is followed by a glucose dehydrogenase gene (gdh). Glucose-mediated repression of beta-galactosidase, alpha-glucosidase, and beta-glucuronidase activities was partially relieved in the mutant strains, while repression by sucrose or fructose remained as strong as in the wild type. In addition to the pleiotropic regulatory effect, integration of the transposons into glcU reduced glucose dehydrogenase activity, suggesting cotranscription of glcU and gdh. Insertional inactivation of the gdh gene and deletion of the glcU gene without affecting gdh expression showed that loss of GlcU function is exclusively responsible for the regulatory defect. Reduced glucose repression is most likely the consequence of impaired glucose uptake in the glcU mutant strains. With cloned glcU, an Escherichia coli mutant deficient in glucose transport could grow with glucose as sole carbon source, provided a functional glucose kinase was present. Therefore, glucose is internalized by glcU in nonphosphorylated form. A gene from Bacillus subtilis, ycxE, that is homologous to glcU, could substitute for glcU in the E. coli glucose growth experiments and restored glucose repression in the S. xylosus glcU mutants. Three more proteins with high levels of similarity to GlcU and YcxE are currently in the databases. It appears that these proteins constitute a novel family whose members are involved in bacterial transport processes. GlcU and YcxE are the first examples whose specificity, glucose, has been determined.