Newly characterized P. aeruginosa PAO1 gene rsaL

The gene name rsaL (lasR spelled backwards) was chosen because the function of RsaL is converse to that of LasR, i.e. it is a repressor of quorum-sensing controlled genes; whereas, LasR is a positive regulator of quorum-sensing genes. Furthermore, rsaL is juxtaposed to the lasR gene (with a one a.a. overlap), but on the opposing strand. This gene exhibits no sequence homology with any known genes or proteins. However, it was found to be a negative regulator of P. aeruginosa quorum sensing.  The action of this repressor was shown to be mediated via decreasing expression of the P. aeruginosa autoinducer synthase gene, lasI.

Protein Sequence of RsaL:
MASHERTQPQNMAFRAKATRTARRESQETFWSRFGISQSCGSRFENGENLPFPIYLLLHFY
IEGQITDRQLADLRGKIRE

Located on Contig 53, from 832870 to 832631 (3/15/99 genome sequence version)

See the following reference for more information:
Teresa de Kievit, Patrick C. Seed, Jonathon Nezezon, Luciano Passador, and Barbara H. Iglewski 1999. RsaL, a Novel Repressor of Virulence Gene Expression in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. J. Bacteriol. 181: 2175-2184

Barbara H. Iglewski, University of Rochester; Luciano Passador, University of Rochester
Patrick C. Seed, University of Rochester; Jonathon Nezezon, University of Rochester



Pseudomonas aeruginosa Community Annotation Project