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New views on PII signaling: from nitrogen sensing to global metabolic control
Karl Forchhammer1, Khaled A Selim1, Luciano F Huergo2
1Interfaculty Institute of Microbiology and Infection Medicine, Organismic Interactions Department, Cluster of Excellence 'Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections', Tübingen University, Auf der Morgenstelle 28, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
Abstract:
PII proteins are multitasking information-processing proteins occurring in bacteria, archaea, and plastids, decoding the metabolic state of the cells and providing this information to various regulatory targets. Research in recent years identified a wide range of novel PII targets mainly through ligand fishing assays, indicating that PII proteins evolved into major regulatory hubs of cellular metabolism. PII proteins orchestrate not only key steps of nitrogen and carbon metabolism but rather control a wide range of transporters and can also regulate the production of signaling molecules (c-di-GMP) and cofactors (NAD+). A recently identified class of PII-interacting proteins, which by themselves have no enzymatic activity, modulate cellular processes through protein interactions, further extending the regulatory range of PII proteins.
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