Adenylylation state of glutamine synthetase and permeability properties of Pseudomonas fluorescens

The state of adenylylation, n, of glutamine synthetase (GS) in Pseudomonas fluorescens has been determined as a function of growth conditions. Compared to the behavior of Escherichia coli, atypical responses to either carbon or nitrogen starvation were observed when P. fluorescens was grown with either succinate, malate, or fumarate as the sole source of carbon and energy. Under conditions of carbon starvation (high NH4+, low dicarboxylic acid substrate), the value of n falls rapidly from 10 to 1.0 during prolonged incubation in the stationary phase, whereas the value of n is unexpectedly high (ca. 10) in extracts of nitrogen-starved cells. These abnormal responses are attributable to particular permeability properties of P. fluorescens cells compared to E. coli. The unusual changes in nitrogen-starved cells are related to the release of alpha-ketoglutarate by such cells during incubation or washing procedures. These changes can be prevented by the addition of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) to the cultures 5 min prior to harvesting the cells, or by freezing the cell pellets just after centrifugation and sonication within 3 min of suspension in buffer, or by suspending freshly harvested cells in buffer containing alpha-ketoglutarate and orthophosphate (i.e., effectors that favor deadenylylation of glutamine synthetase). The abnormal changes which occur during carbon starvation in the presence of excess NH4+ can be prevented by addition of ATP and glutamine to the buffer in which the freshly harvested cells are suspended prior to sonication. The results suggest that during the stationary phase of growth on succinate, fumarate, or malate (but not on glucose), the cellular membrane becomes permeable to small molecules that regulate the adenylylation cascade, and indeed, it was observed that such whole cells expressed, without any chemical or physical treatment, more than 50% of the glutamine synthetase activity they contained. Such cells may be useful in studies to examine the effects of multiple metabolites on the regulation of glutamine synthetase adenylylation in situ.