Evolution of chemotactic-signal transducers in enteric bacteria

The methyl-accepting chemotactic-signal transducers of the enteric bacteria are transmembrane proteins that consist of a periplasmic receptor domain and a cytoplasmic signaling domain. To study their evolution, transducer genes from Enterobacter aerogenes and Klebsiella pneumoniae were compared with transducer genes from Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium. There are at least two functional transducer genes in the nonmotile species K. pneumoniae, one of which complements the defect in serine taxis of an E. coli tsr mutant. The tse (taxis to serine) gene of E. aerogenes also complements an E. coli tsr mutant; the tas (taxis to aspartate) gene of E. aerogenes complements the defect in aspartate taxis, but not the defect in maltose taxis, of an E. coli tar mutant. The sequence was determined for 5 kilobases of E. aerogenes DNA containing a 3' fragment of the cheA gene, cheW, tse, tas, and a 5' fragment of the cheR gene. The tse and tas genes are in one operon, unlike tsr and tar. The cytoplasmic domains of Tse and Tas are very similar to those of E. coli and S. typhimurium transducers. The periplasmic domain of Tse is homologous to that of Tsr, but Tas and Tar are much less similar in this region. However, several short sequences are conserved in the periplasmic domains of Tsr, Tar, Tse, and Tas but not of Tap and Trg, transducers that do not bind amino acids. These conserved regions include residues implicated in amino-acid binding.