Heat shock response of Archaeoglobus fulgidus

The heat shock response of the hyperthermophilic archaeon Archaeoglobus fulgidus strain VC-16 was studied using whole-genome microarrays. On the basis of the resulting expression profiles, approximately 350 of the 2,410 open reading frames (ORFs) (ca. 14%) exhibited increased or decreased transcript abundance. These span a range of cell functions, including energy production, amino acid metabolism, and signal transduction, where the majority are uncharacterized. One ORF called AF1298 was identified that contains a putative helix-turn-helix DNA binding motif. The gene product, HSR1, was expressed and purified from Escherichia coli and was used to characterize specific DNA recognition regions upstream of two A. fulgidus genes, AF1298 and AF1971. The results indicate that AF1298 is autoregulated and is part of an operon with two downstream genes that encode a small heat shock protein, Hsp20, and cdc48, an AAA+ ATPase. The DNase I footprints using HSR1 suggest the presence of a cis-binding motif upstream of AF1298 consisting of CTAAC-N5-GTTAG. Since AF1298 is negatively regulated in response to heat shock and encodes a protein only distantly related to the N-terminal DNA binding domain of Phr of Pyrococcus furiosus, these results suggest that HSR1 and Phr may belong to an evolutionarily diverse protein family involved in heat shock regulation in hyperthermophilic and mesophilic Archaea organisms.