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Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access published online on June 15, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkp502
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© 2009 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Gene Regulation, Chromatin and Epigenetics

A novel nucleoid-associated protein of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a sequence homolog of GroEL

Debashree Basu1, Garima Khare2, Shashi Singh3, Anil Tyagi2, Sanjeev Khosla4 and Shekhar C. Mande1,*

1Laboratory of Structural Biology, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad 500001, 2Department of Biochemistry, University of Delhi, South Campus, New Delhi 110021, 3Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Uppal Road, Hyderabad 500007 and 4Laboratory of Mammalian Genetics, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad 500001, India

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +91 40 24749401; Fax: +91 40 27155610; Email: shekhar{at}cdfd.org.in

Received December 29, 2008. Revised May 18, 2009. Accepted May 22, 2009.

The Mycobacterium tuberculosis genome sequence reveals remarkable absence of many nucleoid-associated proteins (NAPs), such as HNS, Hfq or DPS. In order to characterize the nucleoids of M. tuberculosis, we have attempted to identify NAPs, and report an interesting finding that a chaperonin-homolog, GroEL1, is nucleoid associated. We report that M. tuberculosis GroEL1 binds DNA with low specificity but high affinity, suggesting that it might have naturally evolved to bind DNA. We are able to demonstrate that GroEL1 can effectively function as a DNA-protecting agent against DNase I or hydroxyl-radicals. Moreover, Atomic Force Microscopic studies reveal that GroEL1 can condense a large DNA into a compact structure. We also provide in vivo evidences that include presence of GroEL1 in purified nucleoids, in vivo crosslinking followed by Southern hybridizations and immunofluorescence imaging in M. tuberculosis confirming that GroEL1: DNA interactions occur in natural biological settings. These findings therefore reveal that M. tuberculosis GroEL1 has evolved to be associated with nucleoids.


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