Disease relevance of focA

• By analogy, these data suggest that focA may also be functional in the import of formate into anaerobic Escherichia coli cells [1].

High impact information on focA

• Anaerobic expression of the focA pfl operon is dependent on the transcription factors ArcA and FNR and transcription is directed by multiple, anaerobically regulated promoters [2].
• This hypophosphite-dependent activation of hycA gene expression was reduced 10-fold in a focA null mutant, suggesting that hypophosphite must first enter the cell before it can act as a signal to activate hycA expression [1].
• Results obtained using a hycA-lacZ fusion to monitor changes in the intracellular formate concentration in a focA mutant indicated that the level of formate inside the cell was elevated compared with the wild type [1].
• Moreover, it could be shown that there was a corresponding reduction of approximately 50% in the amount of formate excreted by a focA mutant into the culture medium [1].
• A defined chromosomal focA nonsense mutant, which showed minimal polarity effects on pfl gene expression, had the same phenotype as the insertion mutants [1].

Other interactions of focA

• Transcript analysis throughout the growth phase revealed that maximal anaerobic expression of the focA-pflB operon was restricted to exponentially growing cells [3].

Analytical, diagnostic and therapeutic context of focA

• Site-specific mutagenesis identified the translation initiation codon of focA as a GUG [1].

References