Disease relevance of SCO3034

• A non-sporulating mutant (whiB218) of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2), which proved to contain a deletion of more than 5 kb of DNA including whiB, was complemented by a small cloned DNA fragment, deduced from DNA sequencing to encode a protein of only 87 amino acids [1].
• Mycobacterium tuberculosis whiB2 and S. coelicolor whiB complemented the defect in M. smegmatis 628-53, indicating that these genes are true functional orthologues of whmD [2].
• In a survey of DNA from diverse actinomycetes by Southern blotting, all samples tested hybridized with whiB, but only those representing genera capable of producing sporulating aerial mycelium hybridized with whiG [3].

High impact information on SCO3034

• Expression from parABp(2) depended absolutely on two sporulation regulatory genes, whiA and whiB, and partially on two others, whiH and whiI, all four of which are needed for sporulation septation [4].
• Each of these proteins contains four invariant cysteine residues and a conserved helix-turn-helix motif. whmD, the Mycobacterium smegmatis homologue of Streptomyces coelicolor whiB, is essential in M. smegmatis, and the conditionally complemented mutant M. smegmatis 628-53 undergoes filamentation under nonpermissive conditions [2].
• Thus, whiB transcription is not severely dependent on any of these developmental genes, among which whiG is the determinant of a putative sigma factor specific for, and crucial to, sporulation [5].
• We report here the molecular genetic characterisation of whiB3, a whiB-like gene in the nonspore-forming Mycobacterium smegmatis mc(2)155 [6].

Other interactions of SCO3034

• The Streptomyces coelicolor whiB gene encodes a small transcription factor-like protein dispensable for growth but essential for sporulation [1].

References