Positive feedback exists and drives the glucose-mediated repression in Escherichia coli

The expression of the lac operon of E. coli is subject to positive feedback during growth in the presence of gratuitous inducers, but its existence in the presence of lactose remains controversial. The key question in this debate is: Do the lactose enzymes, Lac permease and β-galactosidase, promote accumulation of allolactose? If so, positive feedback exists since allolactose does stimulate synthesis of the lactose enzymes. Here, we addressed the above question by developing methods for determining the intracellular allolactose concentration as well as the kinetics of enzyme induction and dilution. We show that, during lac induction in the presence of lactose, the intracellular allolactose concentration increases with the lactose enzyme level, which implies that lactose enzymes promote allolactose accumulation, and positive feedback exists. We also show that, during lac repression in the presence of lactose + glucose, the intracellular allolactose concentration decreases with the lactose enzyme levels, which suggests that, under these conditions, the positive feedback loop turns in the reverse direction. The induction and dilution rates derived from the transient data show that the positive feedback loop is reversed due to a radical shift of the steady-state induction level. This is formally identical to the mechanism driving catabolite repression in the presence of TMG + glucose.